TEETH MARKS
by G.E Waldo
Summary: Time-line: Season 6. Alternate Universe/Vampire life... Summary: "At last this is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh"...Wilson quoted, adding "And blood of my blood." House would live. Nothing else mattered.
1. Chapter 1

TEETH MARKS

By GeeLadyf

Time-line: Season 6. **Alternate Universe**/**Vampire life...**

Summary: _**"At last this is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh"...Wilson quoted, adding "And blood of my blood." House would live. Nothing else mattered.**_

Pairing: House/Wilson. Wilson is a little OC here, but then he's not really himself, is he?

Rating: NC-17 **SLASH** ADULT. Angst. (You have been warned).

Disclaimer: The blue-eyed babe with the cane - _**sigh!**_ - is not mine.

_***Story idea by graceasaur! Thanks my friend.**_

_***The first quarter of Chapter One co-authored by graceasaur and GeeLady. There-after - GeeLady**_

Wilson wasn't terribly fond of these kind of nights. Where the shifts were long and the opportunity to get a good meal practically nil.

Of course there was food at home, sitting in the fridge. Boiled dirt-grown tubers and cooked animal flesh gone cold, the slimy grease of it congealed in a grotesque scum. Unappetizing for most anyone. For a vampire? May as well serve him up a plate of hydrogenated pig-fat with a toasted side of compost.

Wilson sighed as he removed his shoes and the other cloth trappings of his "human" life. Not a life he had actively participated in for over a year (except as a fake), because even a creature of the dead had to keep up appearances.

For the job it was a must. Even working in Cuddy's 24 hour Free clinic (night shift of course), afforded him little opportunity to scout out potential mobile snacks. Most of the patients had raging cases of some crotch-rot or other. Vampire's can't get sick, but even we still have standards.

Home was quiet and dark, his favorite noise level and color. Only one sound reached his ears - the gentle human breath of sleep.

James Wilson, still a vampire o' crisp'; still a new-fang-led youth in all things toothy, followed the sweet-air-music to his bedroom.

They shared a bed still. Incredible! As hard as he had discovered it was to resist the smell and taste of human blood, this creature's water of life he had not touched. Not once. Not even yet tempted.

Because he loved this creature (if vampires could love - he honestly wasn't sure), above and beyond even the call of hunger. That hunger raged in him like a howl on the wind. Thankfully he had a few half-pints of blood-sickles stashed at the back of the freezer, hidden beneath the frozen lima beans.

His all-human roomie' wouldn't touch those god - er - devil-awful things, so his mid-day snacks were fairly safe from prying eyes. House would shower and go to work, because other than having a vampire as a room-mate (in an unbeknownst status), his life had not changed much at all. He was still the brilliant doctor, yet the genius, and yet the sexiest form of the flesh Wilson had ever laid his un-dead eyes on, the sweetest smelling body he had ever taken in by the pores (vampire's don't breath either - try keeping that fakery up for a day), and the most delightfully silky surface his vampire nails had ever raked across (accidentally but with underlying intent). Gently but with enough push to extract a cell or two.

Shaking like the wing of a frantic bat, Wilson had put the few tantalizing epithelial's to his tongue, anticipating paradise in the darkest pit of the vampire world. And he was not disappointed. His darling House tasted like sugar and salt. Plus a hint of blood and all other things wonderful.

Wilson watched his marvel rest inside that subdued, paralyzed collapse of human sleep. So vulnerable was his human when he was asleep, it scared him. House's perfect eyes stayed closed against the assault that could come from any quarter. Though, this day, he had been left in peace.

Such fucking beautiful blue eyes, they made his heart ache for their positively perfect human-ness. This was a man he could not bear to curse with the dark blessing. To be cursed with a blessing - yes it was a contradiction, but then he himself lived, if only falsely, because an un-dead man had killed him and given him the gift of eternal dark life.

Wilson stood in the doorway to the bedroom. Soft, artificial light from the hallway fell across a back of long and golden, skin flushed with the warmth of his pumping human heart.

Lovely, lovely skin. Under some lights, he could see every surface vessel. It was like living erotic art. And his softly even in and out breath-fulls, in and out, in, out, in, out...it was almost sexual.

Wilson wanted to wake him and tell him what his small, stony vampire heart had come to understand about the nature of love between creatures that God would curse for it: that it was possible for a vampire to love a human being with all his lack of soul and all his lack of spirit, because he had nothing else to offer but those things he lacked. That lack was the only emotion left to him - and it a living grief - so he held onto it with every last drop of humanity that might be drifting about inside his dried up body.

Wilson the vampire loved this human man - he adored him. He treasured this one and, on the night when he had been created with teeth marks and blood drained to the final drip, had made a promise to the white sunlight of the world that he would never see again to keep his treasure safe and solely for himself forever. Forever.

But only if he asked, only if he asked....

Because forever is a long time to be alone, even for a poor near-virgin vamp' like himself.

Wilson sighed in his discomfort of blood lust and love hunger. He closed the door on the bedroom quietly to let his precious and frail creature sleep.

"Good night House."

House was curled under the blankets. His breathing hitched a little as he woke up and shivered, light drifting through an open door poked at his sleep-lazy mind and cold air coming in through an opening in his closely tucked-in bed sheets caused him to stir. He kept his eyes shut, blindly fixing the disturbance, sighing through his nose before drawing himself closer to maintain his body heat to a more comforting level.

He quickly dozed off again, pleasant images of his roommate crept out of his sub-conscious (or maybe not so 'sub' lately) and filled his dreams. Dark brown eyes against a pale complexion - stunning! Though there was something in them of late. Something unknown. As much as House wanted to search those mysterious eyes for their secret, he would be giving away one of his own for looking so intently at his friend.

House tried to sleep, but couldn't stay asleep with all of this on his mind. He got out of bed and stretched, grabbing his cane and limping out to the living room.

He saw Wilson on the couch and his heart skipped a beat, "What are you still doing up? Do you _ever_ sleep?" He asked, rubbing at his eyes and heading for the kitchen, recalling finding him awake late at night twice last week.

He looked through the cupboards, finding a bag of unopened potato chips near the back and pulling them out, going back into the living room with Wilson and opening them up as he sat down on the couch, not offering any to him as he started to munch on them, watching him closely.

"Of course I sleep, but we're on different shifts."

Apparently satisfied with that, House shrugged and nodded, munching his chips noisily.

"Aren't you going to eat a proper dinner?"

House nodded. "After I finish these."

Morning or evening were their times. In between is when their lives diverged to other, more individualized pursuits.

But this was an evening. Wilson had got up just after sunset and House had arrived home just after trying to cure some sickly human-or-other of his or her frail-human disease.

Frailty in others never used to bother Wilson. On the contrary, frailty had often brought out the nurturer in him, medically and otherwise. But ever since entering the darker side of life (or the lighter side of death - it all depended on one's perspective), Wilson found human weakness nothing more than fodder for mockery. To an consumer of human blood, humans were so helpless as to be laughable. As a vampire, mercy was a state of consciousness tossed out with the rest of the weakling emotions.

Why his form was still drawn unstoppably to House was an on-going puzzle and source of frustration. Vampires weren't drawn, they drew; enticed, coaxed, hypnotized and sent humans into a state of willing lethargy for one purpose only: to bite into the jugular (or better yet an artery) and drink until they were full and the human empty. A simple equation all vampires adopted as a matter of pure, driving, hunger. An instinct both necessary and terrible. Nothing out of the ordinary. Not a thing to give a second thought of worry to. Or even a first.

The sole exception to the vampire rule-book was House. House was as frail in his human life as Wilson was iron hard in his vampire death, but on House the frailty was an adornment rather than a curse. While in life, Wilson knew he had loved this man. Now in death, he treasured him beyond reason or purpose. Perhaps because House was the last link to his own former, living self and the only link in his heartless soul that lead him back to what humans called love. That was, after all, their greatest asset. Possibly the only one.

House caused in him a betrayal. Wilson was now he knew a benedict to his own vampire rites and pure bloody need. All that in him that was evil shrunk before a mere human. Against his well of need for House, his desire for House's life-blood shriveled. At home, he was an ineffectual vampire because he loved a human being more than he loved The Feed.

Wilson sighed. Oh well. What could he do but bend to the unnatural desires of his own poor and shrunken heart?

And House, unable to rest, sat there in his thin pajama bottoms and nondescript tee-shirt, looking all sleepy-eyed and sexy as hell. Human. pink with blood and lush with life.

Wilson had immediately put on his human face (easily done after a year or more of practice. He slipped it on and off now like water on his skin followed by a pat dry) and greeted his love (not yet his lover, but perhaps when the time was right...), whenever House came home or got up.

This evening, prior to his tired slog down the hall to bed, House had spent a moment kicking off his shoes and complaining about "the idiots" with whom he worked and the "especially idiotic moron patient" who refused to listen to his medical advise.

Wilson had cut off the grumbling's with a joke. "Shall I kill them for you?"

It had immediately relaxed his home-partner, House responding with a tiny smile and a half chuckle. "Would you?"

Wilson knew House was joking, and also knew House had no idea Wilson was not joking at all. Still, he would leave them alive as a gift. His loved-one needed work and purpose. Incredibly, and most surprisingly, Wilson had discovered that being a vampire was a purpose unto itself, and a very fulfilling career change. The night clinic job was now simply part of his human costume.

House wandered into the kitchen. House was usually hungry after he woke up and Wilson had taken to ordering whole meals from local restaurants to keep him happy. The rank stink of cooking food nauseated him now, and the taste of it was even worse. Dead, bloodless flesh holds no enticement for a life-eater.

House micro-waved a bowl of pasta and chicken covered in some sort of sauce, and carried it into the living room. Sitting down beside Wilson, he began to eat, switching on the television. Wilson took a brief glance into the bowl of food. The sauce was red. It looked almost eatable.

As House ate and watched his program, Wilson dreamed of who he would eat that night on the way to work, and watched House. This, for him - a vampire breaking the cardinal rule of: Eat People, was almost all he needed. Only one thing would make his un-life perfect - making love to him. Joining him in that state of union only humans enjoyed. It was the one sacrifice a vampire was forced to accept when initiated into the fold of the un-dead: You can no longer love.

Wilson didn't agree with that one. Loving this creature he did without effort. The why's could wait, he supposed, but the hunger for it, the physical expression of it, for that he was starving. One night he would broach it. He did not know how. Scaring House away was unthinkable.

"House..."

House stopped chewing for a moment and glanced at Wilson sitting to his right. "Hmm?" He asked through a mouth-full of red-coated pasta.

"I want to play a game."

House swallowed and licked his lips, Wilson's eyes fixating on the pink tongue darting out to wipe red sauce out of the corners of his soft mouth. "What game?"

"It's called What If...."

"Sounds lame. What if what? How does it go?"

"I ask you a question about something ridiculous - anything - and you tell me your opinion as to whether it's, I don't know, possible, feasible even."

House nodded. "Yup. Sounds lame."

"Better than three hours of Jeopardy."

House had to give to that. He shrugged, set his empty bowl on the coffee table and leaned back. "Okay. We'll try your lame game. Who goes first?"

"Me."

"Why you?"

"My game."

"Baby."

Wilson smiled at him just a little. Not too wide, the fangs were set back enough, and hooked enough, that most people noticed nothing unusual when he spoke. A wide smile, though, and a sharper-than-usual-eyed individual, like House, might notice. "Okay. My turn first." He gave House a level, very serious look. "What if I were a creature of the night?"

House frowned. "You mean a hooker?"

Wilson let that vision play around in his head a bit. Teeth-hook-er maybe. Trust House to leap to something sexual right off. He was a blood-firing creature if ever there was one. "No. Not in that sense. A vampire or a werewolf say."

House gave him a sideways tilt of his head. "What are you on?"

"Just answer the question. Explore the possible science behind it if you want."

House sighed and leaned back on the couch. Wilson could see the darker flesh of his gentiles through the slight fabric of his pajama's.

Wilson felt almost faint with desire. That was one attribute vampires possessed above almost all others: the desire for whatever they hungered could sometimes drive them insane.

"Fine." House was saying. "Wilson as a werewolf. Physical manifestations of werewolf-ish-ness: Hairy as a Greek drag-queen, big teeth, eats like a dog, howls at the moon."

House looked him up and down. "You are naturally slim, which is why I loath your guts every time I have to cut back on french fries. You are lacking even the follicles necessary for sprouting hair on your chest. Your teeth have remained unchanged since you were fourteen; white, slightly bucked, but other wise perfect. I haven't seen you eat for...geeze, at least a year, but we're working opposing shifts now so that's no biggie. Howling at the moon?" House screwed up his face. "Unless you've joined a club I don't know about,...no, you're not a werewolf. Besides, if you were spending the nights prowling the streets looking for victims, I'd have noticed."

Wilson felt slightly let down. "Can't you take this seriously?"

"You want me to take a word game seriously? Not possible unless the words are themselves serious, and these aren't." House narrowed his eyes. "Unless you have a joined a club I don't know about, and you are prowling the streets. Or gay. Or a gay street prowler? Am I getting warm?"

"Just barely. So what if I did? If I _was_?"

House considered it, trying to play the game. "I guess I'd call the dog-pound. Or get you fixed."

"You wouldn't be scared, knowing you were sharing an apartment with a werewolf?"

House took a deep breath, getting into it a little more. Wilson knew House liked to argue, and liked being right even more. "How long would this curse of the beast have been active?"

Wilson pretended to consider it. "How about - let's say a year."

House shrugged. "That's easy. We've been sharing your apartment for six or seven months now, and you haven't bitten me yet. I'd say I'm safe enough."

"Why wouldn't I have bitten you, if I really was a werewolf?"

House now looked a bit wary. "Is this going to disintegrate into declarations of our mutual love and respect, or is this going somewhere that isn't going to make me squirm in my shorts?"

_Squirm?_ _Writhe. Moan his name. _Wilson tried to focus. "Just play the damn game. Take it where you want to."

"Fine. Why wouldn't you have gnawed on my shinbones yet? Hmm. Maybe because I'm your only friend, and maybe because you're my only friend and that's mutually pathetic enough to over-ride your instincts for people-pops."

"What makes you think you're my only friend?"

"You used to have other friends, but since you started working nights and since I started living with you, I've noticed the grand chasm of the lack of other friends so, yeah, we're the only friends we have. Your old friends probably think we're gay."

Wilson was quietly astonished at how House had arrived at nearly the very position Wilson found himself in. House still had associates at work, if not friends, while he himself had House and that was all. As far as he was concerned, all other beating hearts were take-out.

House looked at him, getting into the game now. "My turn."

Wilson collected himself together and nodded.

House leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees, turned his head sideways and stared unblinkingly into the depths of Wilson's eyes.. "What if I knew that you are bi-sexual?"

Wilson sputtered..."How could you poss-"

"You've changed." House answered shortly. "A year ago you gave up oncology for regular night shifts in Cuddy's clinic. You spend an awful lot of time going places after your shift, 'cause you're never home until just before the sun comes up even though your shift starts at seven and ends at three. You must be eating your meals somewhere else because I haven't seen you eat in..." House had to think about it "in forever." House abandoned the chips. "A-n-d I know you watch me sleep. You're either bisexual or a sleep walker, or a bisexual sleep walker, and I know you're not a sleep walker, so...basically you've gotten creepy."

Wilson sat back. "I didn't know all this was bothering you."

"Not so much bother as puzzle the hell out of. It can't be about Amber because you took your shrine down months ago. Wanting to get into a less stressful job at forty-one I can understand, but watching me sleep? Is this just college-buddy curiosity?"

"We were never in college together. Do you really want to know?"

House tensed. "This answer doesn't involve me dressing up like Little Red Riding hood, does it?"

Wilson smiled in spite of himself. "No, I mean do you _really_ want to know? Because giving you either answer will change everything."

House watched him warily, trying to sort his friend out via a search of his friend's opaque irises. "Are we still playing a game?"

"No."

House swallowed. "This _is_ creepy, and by this I mean _you_. How long have you been hiding your taste for man-love?"

"About a year."

House stared. Stunned would have been an over-exaggeration, but surprised didn't quite fit either. "How long have you been resisting your taste for _me_? Because I happen to know I'm irresistible."

_You have no idea. _"Almost a year."

House gaped. "I was kidding."

"I wasn't."

"Okay - that's been clarified. Next question: How in the hell did I fail to notice this drastic change in your underwear preference?"

"You noticed I've been watching you sleep, that wasn't evidence enough?"

"But I thought that was for some Wilson-weird reason, not Wilson wants to get into my pants reason."

"Well, now you know."

House stared down at the bag of chip crumbs. "Yeah." He blew out a lung full of air. "Now I know." After a few seconds, House frowned, cocking his head. "You said _either_ answer..." He trailed off.

The time for a response was now. Keeping his eyes locked on House's, Wilson bared his teeth, readying himself for the reaction most humans had. Some scoffed, then believed. Some believed right away. He had dined on both types. But House was a different creature than any. Wilson turned to his human companion and allowed him the full view of his razor sharp, dog-like fangs, tilting his head back so there would be no mistaking.

However, usually that wasn't enough to convince even those who tended to believe. Even they required additional proof. So Wilson held out his hands, palms down and let House watch as his fingernails grew by a half inch, coming to a lethal looking, dog-like claw.

House scrambled to put distance between himself and Wilson, abandoning his cane and making a limping, stumbling break for the front door. But Wilson was far faster than House now. He used to be faster because the infarction had taken away House's agility. Now he moved faster than House because a vampire had taken away his life, exchanging it for many things, including the power of flight.

Wilson flew so fast that House hadn't time to even take a look over his shoulder before Wilson was upon him, pressing him up against the wall, his cool body fully flushed against the front of House's warm, oh so wonderfully soft and warm, one.

"Don't move." Wilson warned. He hated to have to make it a warning, but he could see the panic in House's eyes, the disbelief mixed with the very real possibilities of blood and death. House wasn't anyone's idiot. But a promise was all he had. "I _swear_ I won't hurt you." Wilson whispered.

He held House still for a moment, feeling the glorious beat of his strong human heart through his own dead cold chest. What a different sort of flight it was. Intoxicating - that movement against his own skin, the vibration of his friend's very being. Wilson found himself panting, imagining the heart below the skin, muscle and bone; a quivering red pump that gave to its human host life and its banquet of love and sex.

Wilson was drunk with touching life. He was mad with the need for more touching, for pressing skin on skin, need against need, for removing every barrier, for the colliding of sex - forever and ever and ever...

"No, I'm not a werewolf - that part was untrue, but the rest isn't." Wilson said the next bit earnestly so House would understand it wasn't his choosing, his un-dead life, though the pervasive, commanding love he felt for House was all him and him alone. A balm of love that soothed his killer soul even now. "This happened _to_ me, I didn't choose it. And you're right on all counts; I work at night for reasons that now should be obvious. I don't eat food at all."

Wilson looked into House's wide blue eyes with his own warm half-lidded brown ones. They were the only things left of him that were still warm, if only metaphorically, but his eyes, undead or living, cold or warm, had nothing but compassion and desire for the human he had pinned against the living room wall, holding him there fast, against his will. That love was a second demon inside him that worked for his good. For his friend whom he loved, but who feared him at this moment like no other. "I guess I don't need to tell you what I _do_ eat."

That made House's eyes widen even further. He was shaking just a little and it broke Wilson's small, stony heart. He held House against the wall with one inhumanly powerful arm, while his other hand very humanely touched House's face and caressed his skin, sliding one sharp nail down his throat to the soft dip of his shoulder, leaving not a scratch to mark its passage.

"You don't ever have to worry about that. I could _never_ hurt you." Wilson let his eyes travel over his friend's face, seeking out the smallest details with a freedom and ease that up to this point had been denied him for fear his love be discovered. "I'd rather be staked than harm one hair on your head or take one drop of blood from your body." Wilson let his lips rest against House's pulsing jugular, still astounded at the revelation that he had no appetite to do violence to this human - who ought to be (to him), like every other human: sustenance.

But this human exuded something intangible and calming that shot through to the deepest parts of his undead spirit. This human, even a simple look, a casual touch of a finger, left him - a _vampire -_ naked and shuddering for him. Trapped in dreams of wanton sexual escapades beneath him. Vulnerable. _Weak._

Intolerable to him under any other circumstances but with this one, with House...Wilson felt a connection to the human world through this man. Through the love he still was able to feel for this man. Vampires were not supposed to feel. Vampires were _forbidden_ to love a human. But no hiding anymore. Denial would be more intolerable. Any more of it and he was certain it would kill him.

Wilson brought his lips next to the hot pulse at House's throat. "You played the game well - both answers are true. Only I'm not bi-sexual, I'm _you_-sexual. Just you." He said as he placed the spread fingers of his free hand over the crown of House's head, his palm coming to rest very gently against his eyes, forcing them to close and hide their blue sparkle. Let him hear it before the lights dim. "And I love you."

Wilson eased his friend to the floor as House collapsed into a deep sleep. Carrying him to the bedroom, he lay him on the bed and covered him, slipping out into the night.

What would happen when in several hours House woke again he had no idea, but the truth no longer slept inside him. It had a home now in House's human mind. Perhaps one day it might reside in his heart as well.

-

-

Wilson hurried along. He had two hours before he had to report to the clinic. Just enough time for a good meal and some dark night of the soul-less.

After a meal of drunken bar patron who'd had no better sense than to walk home through an alley, Wilson snatched up a younger, healthy looking specimen to wash away the foul taste of whiskey saturated blood.

He was full, satisfied and could go almost a week now without another kill.

Alone with his thoughts Wilson had no idea he was being watched until he was swooped up from the ground with frightening speed. In seconds he was standing on the roof of the building he had just been walking next to.

He looked at his body-snatcher. "Donald." He said. It was not a greeting of any sort, nor said in anger. Where everything Donald was concerned, he kept his emotions as flat as a dead lake.

"James." Donald was a fellow vampire approximately one hundred years old. Not vintage, now new. Among vampires age carried some weight but what mattered more than age was breeding. Stock. Heritage. The society in which their previous human life had resided. A vampire was more valued for his education and station or, rather, the education and station of the human they had once been.

Donald claimed Norwegian royalty in his blood. No one really believed it, though he did an excellent impersonation of a lithe, white, ginger-haired aristocrat. He was so tall and thin, one of his mock-names among the vampire population was "Spider" in reference to his thin, stick-like legs. Yet Donald moved with the grace of a Mantis, and was unhesitant about getting exactly what he wished from humans or vampires.

Donald was said to be a favorite pet of what some considered to be the vampire "Queen". She had been a hideous woman in life and made an even uglier vampire in death. She, a fellow Norwegian, had set herself up in Copenhagen as the leader of the vampire race. A claim many vampires refuted. Refuted but rarely challenged, as she commanded thousands of loyal vampires who did her bidding only too gladly. Many vampires, as with humans, were adrift in the undeadness of their lives. So many as unhappy in death as they were in life. The queen", Yolanda, was as ruthless and pitiless in her quest for blood and violence as she was repulsive in her form.

"Everyone knows you're keeping a human pet."

James made no claims to denial or acknowledgement. If Donald knew, then everyone did.

Donald circled him from a good distance. "It is forbidden, you know, to keep a human."

"By who's rules? Your "queen"?"

"Yes, and by the ancient code."

The ancient code was an unwritten set of behaviors passed down from the sire vampire to his "offspring". No one had ever seen the code scratched out on yellowed paper or carved in stone by the finger of a devil. It was a set of archaic rules no one took seriously except those in a position of status, or those who served Yolanda.

"I don't adhere to your outdated code." James said. He was always addressed as James out in the dark. At home he was Wilson, the human who had once been. He liked the distinction and wished to keep it.

"I myself don't care if you fraternize with your food, but the queen shall, when she hears of it."

"I'm sure you'll explain it to her."

"She might send someone."

James felt a rush of violence surge inside. "If any one of you so much as touches a hair on his head, I'll kill you all."

Donald scoffed. "You're what, a year old? And still in disguise as a doctor. A run-of-the-mill profession being played by you in the guise of a man who was a run-of-the-mill person."

"But I was made by Judith." Judith was a three hundred year old vampire who had been a prostitute. Almost a non-person which made her, for a long time, almost a non-vampire. But she had been made by an immensely strong, highly educated aristocrat, a true one, from Prague. A vampire so strong that no one had ever defeated him in a fight to the dust. Judith had inherited, as all vampires did, the characteristics of her maker, _and_ the characteristics of the strongest of the maker's feeds - the strengths of the humans (and not just their blood), upon which he had dined.

The old human prostitute, whoever she had been, had been a fighter, a survivor. Breeding didn't mean everything. Judith had happened upon him one night walking home from work, a thing he liked to do back when he was human. She had fed on him, then taken by his looks or something else she did not explain, made him feed on her. "You seem like you might be a more quality human than most. Almost noble, if my eyes are seeing well. So I don't think I ought to leave you _all_ dead." She has whispered in his bloodless, dying ear. "So I'll leave you un-dead instead."

Wilson remembered the taste of metal and salt, the warmth of her blood on his lips, and a strange awakening inside him as her blood entered his body. He felt himself, all at once, die and come to life. Fall into dark death and rise into the darkest night. He was at once a creature struggling to his feet, dazed at what had just occurred, and a dead man left behind on the pavement, though the pavement empty.

Wilson had come into his mind as a vampire, his human memories swiftly gathered up and tucked away in a secret place just revealed to him; the mind-chamber of his old humanity.

He had walked home as though his journey had not been interrupted.

He had been interrupted, though. Yes, for certain.

Donald made great effort to not look impressed. "You watch yourself Teether. Don't go falling in love with a human. Or Yolanda might send someone to re-educate you on the finer things of being a vampire. Or teach him a lesson of a different sort."

Wilson heard the unmistakable threat in Donald's words, and the scorn in his voice. Wilson was upon him in under a second, with his hands around Donald's throat, and his great inherited strength lifting him off the tar-ed rooftop like he weighed no more than a mangy dog. "Touch one hair on his head. Harm the smallest part of his body. Go anywhere near him at all, _any_ of you, and you'll swiftly learn something new as well. Like what it is to be reduced to dust."

Wilson let him go, carelessly thumping him down on the sticky black carpet.

Donald rubbed at his neck. He knew not to push this any further. He knew James was no one to be trifled with any less than he or his queen was.

Wilson saw the older Vampire's carefully controlled fear. Despite his age and breeding and close association with the "queen", Donald was as breakable as James was.

No, breeding wasn't everything. Sometimes it was nothing.

Donald decided to end this confrontation, leaving things as they lay. Now was not the time for him to take the matter up. Not here, not now. "It is forbidden to love, James. Even more so to love a human. This isn't over." He would take it up with his queen. Donald disappeared in a flash of blue vampire haze. A trick many vampires used to appear more powerful and mysterious than they really were. One that hardly ever fooled another vampire, save for those newly born.

Wilson called into work and made his excuses for not appearing, then hurried home. Finding House still asleep was a storm of relief. He crawled into the bed and wrapped his arms around his friend. He would wait for him to awake, and explain things further. He would make House understand. He would love him and House would feel it - know it fully to his human depths.

They would love each other, just as before.

XXXXX

Part II asap


	2. Chapter 2

TEETH MARKS

Part II

By GeeLady

Time-line: Season 6. **Alternate Universe**/**Vampire life...**

Summary: _**"At last this is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh"...Wilson quoted, adding "And blood of my blood." House would live. Nothing else mattered.**_

Pairing: House/Wilson. Wilson is a little OC here, but then he's not really himself, is he?

Rating: NC-17 **SLASH** ADULT. Angst. (You have been warned).

Disclaimer: The blue-eyed babe with the cane - _**sigh!**_ - is not mine.

_***Story idea by graceasaur! Thanks my friend.**_

When House stirred in his sleep, Wilson held him tighter, anticipating that first rising to consciousness and the subsequent panic that anyone might have, had they just learned that their best friend of fifteen years, and roommate of nearly eleven months, had become a vampire without letting them in on it.

The semi-coma of rest Wilson, (newly pledged vampire), had placed House (human being) in several hours before, was coming to an end. Once wakefulness came to its own, Wilson felt the body in his hands stiffen, and Wilson knew that House was searching through the dark with his day-bright eyes, giving himself a few seconds to remember where he was, recall everything that had happened, and consider his first words.

Wilson broke the tension first, speaking calmly in his ear - "It's just me. Lie still for a moment, okay?"

There was a moment's hesitation while House considered his request. Wilson had to admire guts like that, but then House had never been a weakling. "_Why_ do I have to lie still?"

"Because I want to explain things to you."

House huffed. "Either I'm having a bad dream or my best friend has become life-challenged. What else is there to explain?"

"Assurances, then." Wilson answered. "I have gone toothy." He smiled in the dark at House's previous reference to his new, inhuman fangs. "So I want to state promises that I'll never, ever hurt you. I need you to know that you could stake me, turn me in, run away, and _still_ I'll never hurt you. And if you tell me to leave tonight, to disappear and never come back, I will. I'll go and leave you unmolested."

House sighed, like his friend turning into Dracula had happened a few times and it was old and tiresome. "Speaking of molested, can you ease your grip on my stomach. You're hugging the stuffing out of me."

A smile made it almost all the way to his fangs. House wasn't talking as though he wanted to run. "Sure. Sorry." Wilson shifted a bit on the bed, he was getting uncomfortable himself and he knew House would soon be demanding to be un-clutched. "Look, if I let you up, are you going to freak out again? Run out the door in those thin pajama's?"

House shook his head, his hair rubbing against the cotton pillow-case in the dark, making tiny blue sparks. "No," He said. "No freak out."

Wilson released his grip and House sat up. "So, what now?" He reached for the bedside lamp and switched it on, squinting his eyes in the sudden bright glare. "We just keep living together like nothing's changed? Like everything but you is normal - and then pretending _that's_ normal?"

"I hope you'll want to, yes."

House edged himself off the bed and felt around on the floor for his cane. Taking it in hand, he fished some underwear out of a drawer and a pair of jeans from his closet. He stared at Wilson. "You're just going to sit there and watch me dress?"

Wilson shrugged, but didn't answer directly. "You say you won't run, so why do you need to get dressed?"

"Because I didn't say I wouldn't leave to go to the liquor store for some beer or probably something way harder. _And I mean WAY_."

"Why do you need to drink?" Wilson wanted the remainder of this evening to go smoothly. Alcohol combined with House tended to produce jagged edges.

House laughed through grim lips. "You're joking, right?" House finally gave up on Wilson allowing him privacy. "Fine," he said, letting his pajama bottoms drop to the floor. "You stay - you get a strip-tease." As he stepped one leg at a time into his cotton boxers, he heard Wilson suck in a quick breath. House tried to ignore the weird situation of his best friend ogling him, quickly pulling the underwear up over his hips. But he could feel Wilson's eyes follow his with every movement. Dark, interested eyes draped all over him; up and down and sideways.

House felt the heat of a rising blush despite his irritation. "You're gay now, too?"

"No." It was complicated. Vampire's desired no sexual preference because, despite the mistaken vampire fictions depicted on television and in the movies, vampires desired no sex. A vampire cannot reproduce him or herself by human means. Only by feeding and then being fed upon. "But I seem to find myself in a small minority among the un-dead." Wilson explained. "I love and desire you." As though he was born to it. _Perhaps as in my death but un-dead birth._

House stopped buttoning his shirt and stared at his best friend. "I don't have to tell you that this is not only very creepy, but a little uncomfortable."

"I know. I'm sorry." Wilson had left the mattress and was leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, casually watching House's every movement.

House allowed himself tiny glances at his old friend. He looked just like the old Wilson. A shade paler perhaps, but otherwise he had the same face, eyes and expressions. The angles of his limbs and the way he rested his back against the plaster, regarding House with that idle curiosity that he had so often displayed - all of that was unchanged. Perhaps, in light of what was happening, that idle curiosity hadn't been so idle after all.

House suddenly walked over, getting real close, his face ever morphing from nervous to curious to intrigued. "Does it hurt when your -" He nodded to Wilson's nails which had returned to their normal cut and polish, "- you know, nails do their thing, or the teeth - do _they_ grow longer, too?"

Wilson shook his head.

House impulsively reached out one finger, bringing it near to Wilson's mouth in a silent request. Wilson was impressed. Yes, he had always known House possessed a serious set of balls on him. Plump, attractive, blood-filled pink balls, now that he had seen them for himself.

Wilson gave his permission by opening his mouth and allowing House to probe inside with one finger. He could feel House's calloused finger-tip brushing over the tip of one fang and then the other, taking his time, discovering all he wanted to know. Again, a simple gesture of seeking knowledge, but sexual in its execution.

House withdrew the finger away quickly with a small gasp. A drop of blood rose on the surface of his skin.

"Careful." Wilson said. "They're very sharp."

House licked his finger and nodded, moving away again.

House limped out to the living room. Wilson followed. House slipped on his jacket and took up his motorcycle helmet.

Wilson was worried now. "Are you really going to come back?" He asked.

House nodded. "I said I would."

Wilson tried to believe him. "_Please," _he asked, "don't lie to me about this."

House found his keys and wallet. "I said I would and I will." But he did not look at him.

Wilson watched the door open and shut, House slipping out into the night. If he still had tears in his body, Wilson would have cried openly. He didn't think House was going to come back.

He was sure House had lied.

-

-

Wilson flew silently over and high above the motorcycle winding its way through the dark streets. A short rain had left its shine on everything. Wilson followed as House rode passed his usual liquor store, and his own dead heart formed a ragged new crack.

But then House turned into an all night cold beer store, and his shale-like heart soared again, all two calcified ounces of it. But the thought was the same. He waited until House exited the store, strapped the case of beer onto the rear of his Honda and turned the two wheeled vehicle in the direction of home.

Wilson all but vanished from the air, he moved so fast to beat House back to the apartment. Never-the-less, it was with trepidation that Wilson entered and made himself appear as though he had not gone anywhere. Maybe House would decide at the last moment to not come home, but turn the bike to some other destination.

By the time he heard the key in the lock, Wilson was figuratively beating his hands and head against a hardened shell of blank fear, an emotion he had not experienced in so long, he had no idea what to do with it, or who or what to blame.

House entered and Wilson said a silent prayer to...whomever might deem a vampire's prayer of thanks worth listening to. "Hey." he said as House shook off the water from his leather coat.

"Hey." House answered.

"Usual place closed?"

House stared in quiet shock. "How did you-?" Then maybe realized. "Oh, I get it. Vampire sense or sight or whatever sort of power you have now."

"Was it closed or have you recently changed liquor stores."

House was silent for a moment, cracking a beer can and gulping back almost half of it in one backwards tilt of his head, the regular movement of the juncture of the thyroid plates was a rhythm of life. House's throat was exposed and vulnerable and, to Wilson, strangely beautiful.

But it seemed House was looking to get drunk, his best friend being dead and all. House swallowed twice, forcing the mind-doping beverage down hard. "I almost decided to not come back, then changed my mind."

Wilson was so relieved to hear the honesty. But even so. "You lied to me, about coming back."

"_You_ lied about your new dental work."

Touche'. "If _we_ are going to work, we can't have any more lies." Wilson guessed he might have expected too much from House right off. Perhaps a compromise between them, if not always the truth. Blood-letters can't be choosers, or something to that effect. "Can we start again, then?"

House nodded. "Sure. We'll start again."

Wilson's sanctuary was restored, his terror at the possibility House had left him, abated for now. "Thank you."

House snapped. "Yeah? Well don't thank me. I still might decide to leave you to your new ivory enhanced friends. I've got my life to live. Not sure I want your death along with it."

Wilson wished he could make him understand. "Maybe you have some idea of the loneliness I've endured with my new..."condition"." He chuckled ironically, a softly hysterical sound, and for a short moment, he sounded like the Wilson from before, when Amber had died; back when he thought his life had ended. How trivial it all seemed now. Life was no better than death if the life was un-dead in its nature.

"Vampires don't lead epic social lives." Wilson offered. "We don't live in castles and wear capes. We're more animal than human in our appetites. We hunt, eat and live alone. We never make friends with other vampires and we associate with humans only if it'll get us a meal.

Wilson hugged his chilled arms to his room-temperature chest. "The sun doesn't bring us warmth." _We can't even keep in the heat from a fire. _Only the hot, red liquid of life keeps a vampire at a level of comfort that is enough to pass for human_._ "Vampires don't love, they don't even _like_. We live in the dark, eat the creatures we used to be, maybe used to love. We live alone and feed alone. And we have eternity to look forward to only more of that. It isn't as glamorous as it might first appear."

"You're breaking my heart."

Wilson didn't expect sympathy. "You doubt my sincerity, don't you?" Wilson weakly gestured to House with one hand. "I mean, about never hurting you. The only reason I'm _here_ is because I love you too much to act like a faithful vampire. I'm a shame to my race. The others say I'm sacrilegious - a pervert."

"You just told me that vampires don't love. Kind of hard to believe you have it in spades when your brethren don't."

Wilson needed him to believe. If House didn't believe, there would never be peace between them, and if there couldn't be peace, then there couldn't be love or anything else worthy of having. As friends they would end. As potential lovers, they would never begin. Wilson sighed audibly. It had been a night of confessions and fear. Either death or life - or un-life - was how it had to end. He saw no other way for it, or nothing better could begin.

Wilson reached for and found among the papers on House's coffee table, a long sharpened pencil. He tossed it to House. Then he lay back on the couch and opened his shirt, so his white chest was exposed. Purple veins could be seen worming their way across and down the translucent skin.

House stared at Wilson, then at the pencil in his hand. "Am I drafting a letter to Lestat?"

"Kill me." Wilson said simply.

"You mean, stake through the heart thingy? Like on TV?"

Wilson nodded. "About the only thing about us they ever get right."

"You want to die? And you want me to make it happen - why?"

"So you'll know once and for all - for certain - that I will never harm you in any way. If you don't believe me, if you think I'll forget and one day eat you as a midnight snack, then kill me right now, you may as well. But if you think I'm telling the truth, then don't."

"What's the catch? You're a vampire, an evil monster of the dark - there has to be a catch."

"But I'm still your friend. No catch."

House turned up one ironic corner of his mouth. "Yes - plus you're still _Wilson_. There's a catch."

Wilson smiled. "You got me there I guess. Okay. If you don't believe me, then kill me, that's your choice; your decision. But if you decide I'm telling the truth, you have to let me live, and you can't ever take it back. That's the catch. You can't change your mind and stake me somewhere down the road. Be honest whether you think I'm being truthful or just screwing with you. Respect me enough not to lie to me before I live or die."

"Very poetic. I could just lie about being truthful, you know. Pretend to be honest and stake or _not_ stake you."

"No you couldn't."

"Why not?"

"Because this is _me_, and you're _House_. The House I knew as a human, and know as a vampire, hates hypocrisy. You might lie, you have lied - for all kinds of reasons - you lied tonight, but the House I know could never lie about _lying_."

House stared at Wilson, his eyes unreadable, flipping the pencil around in his fingers like a baton. Like his cane or the many others things he daily finger fucked with. House leaned back, tossing the pencil on the coffee table. Instead of executing his best friend, he drained his beer. "Looks like we're gonna' stay room-mates." House thought about it. "And I'm going to drink many, many more beer to seal this evil deal."

Wilson laughed a little, fetching House another cold beer, consciously holding his nose when he opened the fridge to avoid the stomach turning odor of food. Things might be okay. Wilson felt happy for the first time since his birth unto death. A vampire's happy - a tiny fragment of belief that he didn't need to be as dead as he thought he must. For most there was no choice but to be un-dead and suffering in its inherent blankness of soul.

For him, House had chosen life - _his_ life, if so it could be called. Wilson no longer felt like a mere unknown. An unwanted, un-dead thing, but a thing not wholly deceased. He was experiencing that elusive emotion that all humans enjoyed even in the worst horrors that their lives were sometimes reduced to, (because humans knew how to inflict pain, often with just as much enthusiasm and talent, as vampires did).

Wilson gathered that tiny spark of feeling to his chest and held on tight. It was so thin and fragile that a wrong wish, an unnecessary Feed (a kill because he was feeling like a vampire, not like a _hungry_ vampire), or an ill-advised turn of the eye could whisk it away.

Wilson felt the tender life of it shiver inside him, a power to awaken the dead.

He felt hope.

-

-

House got good and thoroughly drunk, but since he was off work the following day, Wilson didn't take issue with House's over-flowing libations. House's convenient passing out allowed him, rather, a night of free hunting without the worry of either getting to work on time, or the larger worry ever on his mind for the last fifteen years - was House going to be okay?

Wilson interrupted a rapist about to do the evil deed on an underage girl. The brute never knew what hit him and the girl had no idea what happened when a twist of violent wind swooped down and, with an invisible arm of power, carried away her attacker in the blink of an eye.

Wilson drank to satisfaction, then disposed of the criminal's remains in Lake Carnegie. This one didn't bother him at all. Wilson did his best to choose those who were less _un_deserving than others. Let the fish find the rapist first, the birds second (everyone's needs to eat after all), and the police third...or whenever they got around to dragging the lake for an asshole no one missed anyway.

When Wilson returned home, he heard the unmistakable sounds of House groaning in his sleep. The alcohol had worn off by now, and his leg didn't like sobriety. Wilson was just removing his coat when he heard softly limping feet. House dashed to the toilet as fast his gimpy leg allowed.

Wilson cringed when he heard the distinct sound of retching. He shuddered. Freshly cooked, untouched gourmet food turned his stomach - but vomit? That was every vampire's nightmare. Wilson was sorry to have to allow House to care for his own tummy tonight. Wilson did, however, remember a fizzy drink that sometimes helped.

He fished around in the kitchen cupboards and found a small box. Dropping two tablets into a glass of cold water, he walked it almost all the way to the bathroom. He waited until he heard a flush, then entered. "Here." He thrust it at House. The smell of human stomach waste still clung in the air and he needed to make a fast exit.

House accepted the glass with a bit of surprise. "You're helping me? Serving me?"

Wilson looked confused and it was comforting for House to see just Wilson. No hint of the dark creature of hell lurking beneath. House drank.

"Why wouldn't I?"

House shrugged. He figured vampire's would somehow as a matter of course put themselves far above mere mortals, and helping a human might be breaking the club rules. Nice to know Wilson was still mostly Wilson. At least when he had a full stomach. "Get enough to eat?" House asked as he pushed himself off the floor and stood.

Wilson noted House leaned on the sink to keep upright and to steady the listing tilt that was affecting his usual six-foot-two, making him look shorter and less threatening. Less arrogantly sure of himself. More vulnerable. Wilson loved the look on him. "How did you know I have fed?"

"Your breath smells like...an emergency room."

Oh...right. Broken, leaking bodies. Blood on the instruments and on the floor; on the doctors and nurses shoes. The air pungent with sterilized gauze and the most mysterious and wonderful and delicious fluid in the universe. When humans had a full tank, they breathed, worked and loved. When the needle was suddenly drained to empty, so would "live" a vampire. Nature's balance.

"Sorry." Wilson covered his mouth and turned away, heading to the couch. "Yours wouldn't win any prizes either."

House took the hint and rinsed his mouth in the sink using a few hand fulls of water. Then he hobbled out to the living room. Wilson had sat down and switched on the television.

House sat down beside him. Not quite as close as he would have any previous time, back when he had no idea his best friend was gay. And in love with him. And un-dead. "Anything on?" He asked.

Wilson felt the tension drain from him. Things were almost normal. So close that the difference was almost negligible. "How about a movie?"

House nodded. "Sounds good." Then he looked sideways at his toothy pal. "No vampire movies. And nothing with gore or blood." Then as an after-thought - "or sex. Or gay sex, or gay _vampire_ sex. In fact, nothing below a Family rating."

Wilson huffed through his nose. "That pretty well takes care of cable and HBO. Does the weather channel make you nervous?"

House leaned back, getting comfortable. "Turn to the Disney channel. That ought to be safe enough."

Wilson smiled at House's ludicrous precautions. "House, I work with sick people all night when I'm on duty. I still examine crotch rot and stitch wounds. I see blood and smell it, without losing control. I'm in charge of my passions." _Except one._

All House had to do was roll his head to the left and he was speaking mere inches from Wilson's right nostril. "You ate a person an hour ago, and yesterday you gave me a hickey."

Point taken. "I did not leave a mark when I was nuzzling your neck." _I wanted to. _"Believe me, if I had intended on branding you as mine, it would already have been done months ago."

The crack made House a little nervous again and he shifted a couple of inches to the right. "Oh..." He said, his tone reflecting how weirded out he felt about it.

Wilson regretted saying it so casually, like House's skin getting carved with Wilson's "brand" was eventually going to be the case. "Sorry. Didn't mean for that to sound like a given. Without your permission, I won't ever lay a hand on you again." He said, his voice softer. He was gushing sincerity, and he hadn't even meant to. "No matter _how_ much I want to."

House stared for a few seconds then nodded, satisfied. "Okay."

They watched Escape to Witch Mountain, the original version, and House fell asleep again ten minutes into the dreadful thing. Wilson eased his friend's body toward him with a gentle tug, and House's left cheek came to rest on Wilson's lap.

Wilson, feeling a little guilty for his self-indulgence, allowed the heat from House's skull to spread its warmth over the icy flesh of this thighs, letting it get under his skin. The sensation was astounding, evoking memories of a warm body that used to be his own.

Wilson turned his mind back to the present, leaning over until his mouth was an inch from House's right ear. Then he whispered, his lips brushing the soft lobe, his nose getting tickled by House's short, soft curls. "I don't need your permission when you're asleep, though. Medical proxy's privilege."

Wilson shut the television off and sat in the dark while House slept on his lap for hours. It was fine. House could sleep in tomorrow. Vampire's didn't sleep (though Wilson still tried it from time to time), and he himself did not need to go into work until tomorrow night. For now, this was as close to heaven as his vampire soul could get. Or ever want.

-

-

Wilson made sure the curtains were drawn well, so the sunlight would stay outside and he would not burn. Vampires did not burst into flames with the suns rays as depicted in fiction, but vampire skin did burn very, very easily. Paper-thin and white, UV's could raise a blister within minutes, and then there would be questions and doctors, examinations and then - discovery! His cloak of human would be torn away, revealing the anti-human inside.

They would lock him up, run tests, possibly kill and dissect him. And if that happened he would never see House again.

Wilson left House still snoozing on the couch, changed into his "sleeping" clothes, and slipped into their comfortable bed. If House didn't join him, it didn't matter and he could rest the whole day without worry. If House joined him, even better for that was always a warm delight. House beside him beneath the sheets was like having his own living, breathing electric blanket.

Wilson climbed under the covers and rolled onto his left side, thinking about how things had changed between them yet essentially had stayed the same. House was a man not easily spooked or seduced, his curiosity would almost always over-ride the potential for danger, and his personal morality forbade him using anyone sexually unless they put a price on it. Unless it was business.

In his personal life, House was cautious to a fault. Wilson decided that now he would no longer hesitate to take full advantage of that warm body, whenever House was asleep and unaware. He had made his posthumous confession as to his new condition, and House had not killed him. He had run, sort of, but had also returned on his own. House had gotten drunk with him, though vampires, sadly, could not get drunk off of alcohol. It had to be mixed with blood first to have any significant effect. And House had watched TV with him and let Wilson bring him a glass of liquid antacid for his touchy stomach, as though nothing about Wilson was any different. As though his best pal had _not_ been forever altered by a demon creature.

Wilson rested and let his mind wander, imagining long, hot limbs draped across his cold, dead flesh. Soon he would close his eyes and rest soundly, though never as deep as true sleep.

-

-

The next evening, House was up and around and largely recovered from his dreadful hang-over that had eaten up his day off.

But tonight was another shift for Wilson and he dressed in the human trappings of the professional male, said a contented goodbye to House and disappeared into the night. Once he was out of sight of the apartment, he forwent walking and took to the air. The night was static and sparked against his skin, raising hackles and causing him a feeling of strange un-ease. Unusual, for he was a beast of the dark and instinctively loved its ever shifting cloak of shadows.

Wilson stopped in mid-flight, settling down on the roof of a building. Just out of habit, he walked to the edge and looked out over Princeton. The lights of the city shone in fits and starts through the atmosphere, blinking on and off like the fire bugs of June. While in the dark hours, the city was still, its fears far away and its intent innocent. Just the opposite of him and his kind.

"Where's your human lover?" A woman's voice taunted, circling over-head.

Wilson was not frightened. He did not even jump at the sudden interruption of his contemplative moment.

The three vampire ladies, if they could so be called, swam through the air around him in a circle, half formed, half the misty blue substance some vampire's, with much practice, managed to perfect. It was a good eye-candy. A trick to play on their poor victims, their fate sealed already by simply having caught a vampire's nose. Scare tactics were unnecessary for the Hunt or the Feed, but some vampires had no moral code that spoke to such things.

Trust Donald's idiot groupies to ruin a perfectly enjoyable moment. The three sister vamp's giggled while Wilson tried to ignore them. "You may as well go back to your Idiot Duke." Wilson said the last word as though it were the biggest laugh he'd heard in a while. "If he's lacking an audience for more than an hour, he gets an terrible rash."

The girls giggled and taunted him with ancient rhymes...

_"Cometh in bonds and sleep my darling,_

_sleep until the sun is falling_

_Then awaken at my bidding,_

_Thy slaked soul slipping, slipping.._

_You've loved me with your life, oh sweetly._

_Thus live I, but by your life completely."_

The gusting wind carried most of their idle talk away with itself. "Go home." Wilson said, the very words mocking, since he knew they had none. Donald didn't believe in permanent residences for "Vampire kind". He believed vampires should take what they liked, live where they wished, but never for long and always moving on.

Wilson left the roof-top and the silly vamp's behind, idly curious at to where their fool of a master was this night. Donald hunted almost every other sunset. Wilson suspected he was trying to put on weight, a fruitless venture. A vampire looked and was what he was when alive, and if he dies in a certain form and substance, he were stuck for eternity in that same guise. Donald was a spider and would always be a spi-

Wilson stopped short. How did the sisters know he was there on the roof-top or where he was going? Donald didn't even know where Wilson lived as no vampire could read the thoughts of another and Wilson was always very, very careful to make sure he was never followed home. He had always taken great pains to keep the existence of House secret from his own sort.

Yet Donald knew about House, which meant...

Wilson felt a horror race through him as he turned for home again, flying faster than the wind could possible carry him. Flying for his life and House's; for their life with each other.

Wilson entered his apartment building but not in the human way; not as a human would do by unlocking a door and taking an elevator. He slipped in between a cracked window and through the door frames of one apartment after another, seeing the carnage Donald had left behind as he had passed, and fed, on the tenants of several of the other apartments.

When Wilson reached his own, it took him only an instant to recognize the odor of death. Not human death, but vampire death. The musty smell that hung in the air whenever an un-dead invaded any space occupied by the truly alive. No odor of blood was in the mix. That meant not enough blood spilled in this space to reach his nostrils. A very good sign.

But Wilson found Donald with House in his bird-like clutches, the fangs of the hated vampire biting down into the pulsing throat of his human love. House hung limply from the hands of the creature even other vampire's called "creature"; semi-conscious, his blood polluted with a vampire's thoughts, drugged to a stupor by the mere presence of the hypnotic power all vampire's possessed in their touch. No matter how physically or mentally strong the individual was, humans were simply no match for the demon-like.

Wilson went insane with rage. Judith's strength had done him well and with one hand he grasped Donald around his skinny throat, pulling back on it until Donald's fangs were pulled violently out of House's throat with a sickening wet _pop!_ There was blood, yes, but Donald had not gotten much. Enough to injure, but not enough to kill.

Wilson shunted Donald out of the apartment and into the air with the strength of ten like himself. Donald was crafty and well-connected, respected even (among some), and thought himself a great vampire, but at that moment, Wilson was far more dangerous, and far more greatly filled with fury than most vampires had ever in history been, because Donald had dared touch his living treasure.

Wilson ignored the struggles of his fellow. He didn't even feel the strikes against his flesh from Donald's dangling legs or the bloody spray escaping from his sputtering mouth.

Blood spray. House's blood. Wilson kept that thought in mind as he flew. He crossed half the continent and found what he was looking for; always deeply respectful yet delighted by its unashamed power.

Donald began to scream when he saw it - the demarcation where the sun rose and created day and the night lingered, trying to keep the dark earth for itself.

Wilson was just at its edge now, matching the turning speed of the earth at just over one thousand miles an hour. He held Donald out away from his own body as far as he could mange and watched as the rays of the star sucked hungrily at the murderous vampire's skin, raising blisters until Donald's screams were lost in his agony of being burned alive, though very, very slowly. There were no flames here, nor would there be, but there was torture. Plenty of torture, and Wilson held Donald in it until his own arm could no longer stand the pain; until the flesh of his forearm was also covered in the ugly red welts of star-light.

When Wilson could stand no more, he pulled Donald back into the shadows and, exceeding now the acceleration of the planet, carried Donald over farm-land and hills until his vampire predatory eyes spotted what he had been looking for - an empty barn-yard beneath the moon. Bringing him down to the ground, and standing in a pile of a urine-soaked mix of cow-dung and thick mud, Wilson ignored Donald's cries of agony and pleas for mercy, instead tightening his grip.

"No mercy." Wilson snarled. "Remember Donald? Your creed." Wilson used both hands now, squeezing and squeezing until Donald's neck narrowed to a band of mush, his bones cracked, and his head popped off in a gory wrath of dead flesh and blood not his own. Both head and torso made a valiant effort to reach the ground, but dissipated into dust before either could touch. No vampire ever went back to the dust. Not the dust humans went back to; this dust fertilized nothing and encouraged no seedlings. Vampire dust was a fine, lifeless grit - free of anything organic. Not a sign within it that there had ever been life there at all.

Wilson watched the dust settle into the dung-laden muck, soaked with the especially nose-burning reek of bovine piss. A fitting end for a fake duke.

But this was a dangerous thing he had done, Wilson thought as he left the disgusting surface, now made even worse by the tiny remains of a indiscriminate killer. He, Wilson, had just killed a popular vampire. One who'd had followers and admirers, such as they were. Eventually, there would be a price to pay. What sort of price he did not know, nor did he have time to think about it right now.

Wilson thrust the worry from his mind and returned home at an impossible speed, finding the windows of the building in the darkness in only minutes. House would still be alive. He was certain Donald had not drank enough to kill. Only to hurt. Because a kill would be the end of them both.

But hurt...hurt he could fix. In more ways than one.

XXXXXXX

_**BOO!**_

Part III asap. Promise!

(Happy Halloween)

BTW: Next chapters of:

Incompatible

Amendment

and

Fatherland

are coming very soon!


	3. Chapter 3

TEETH MARKS

Part IIIf

By GeeLadyf

Time-line: Season 6. **Alternate Universe**/**Vampire life...**

Summary: _**"At last this is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh"...Wilson quoted, adding "And blood of my blood." House would live. Nothing else mattered.**_

Pairing: House/Wilson. Wilson is a little OC here, but then he's not really himself, is he?

Rating: NC-17 **SLASH** ADULT. Angst. (You have been warned).

Disclaimer: The blue-eyed babe with the cane - _**sigh!**_ - is not mine.

_***Story idea by graceasaur! Thanks my friend.**_

House was lying on the bedroom carpet, the Chinese patterned area rug stained new with drops of blood, scattered in the frenzy of Donald's stealthy but unsuccessful attack.

Wilson fell to his knees and in one smooth motion cradled House's shoulders in his arms to make a rapid examination. There were, on the left side of the smooth, white throat, two deep marks; penetrations obvious to no one but a vampire that were the hallmark pattern of a vampires fangs. Blood still seeped from the wounds, trickling down, the anti-coagulant with which all vampires were cursed/blessed keeping the blood flowing even now, more than an hour after the attack.

House had lost enough blood that the whole left side of his upper torso was sticky with multiple rivulets of the stuff, tacky to the touch. Wilson put two fingers to the jugular on the right side of House's throat, the side opposite the Feed wounds, and felt a weak heart beat. A great shudder of intense relief flowed through him. House was not nearly dead.

But he wasn't all alive anymore either. Though Wilson could feel the life flowing through House's body as he carried him to the bed, that life felt needy. His sensitive vampire nose could detect that fading miracle reaching out in need. To most vampires, that was the only essence of erotic left for them to enjoy. To Wilson, it was the cry of the raven; a warning that he was about to lose the one thing in the world he still cared about and who, astonishingly, still cared about him, even in his living death.

House would unconscious for a long while from Donald's anesthetic producing saliva. On the bed Wilson had more room and could examine the wounds more closely. Resting his left palm on the bed covers to better facilitate his view, his hand found a large, wet stain. When he drew it back to see what he had touched, his fingers came away sticky with blood. He threw back the bed covers. Beneath the quilt was a large stain that had soaked through several layers of blankets and sheets to the mattress. Donald had eaten his first course here, on the bed, then threw the quilt over it to disguise how much blood he had actually taken from House, in case his Feed was interrupted.

House's blood was everywhere. For the first time since being un-born, Wilson thought the sight of so much of it was a terrible thing to see. A nightmarish sight, ugly with true death. Donald had started his attack on the bed and this is where in fact House had lost much of his blood in the first struggle before he went down into mental darkness. Donald would have completely overpowered him after that, dragging him onto the floor. In the interim House had lost a great deal of blood. Far more than Wilson had first believed.

Wilson felt foolish. He had been so enraged, so seeing black in his desire to destroy Donald, he had put that revenge before even House's life. Because he had not seen the pool of blood beneath the quilt, he had assumed House had not lost very much. He had mistakenly believed that Donald had just arrived a moment before and that he had stopped the attack in plenty of time to save House's life.

As he prepared to assist in the healing of the human flesh wound (and the vampire nature of it), Wilson vowed to never let himself be so short-sighted again. House was going to need assistance if Wilson wanted to keep him living, now and in the future.

House's heartbeat was thready. That meant the volume in his veins was so low, unless he received a transfusion of blood right now, he would die. Yet Wilson dared not take House to an emergency room; there would be questions and scrutiny and House, or himself, might even be quarantined in some fashion. And so odd would the doctors find the wounds, and his own teeth if it got that far, that would elicit still more questions, and more.

Two fang marks and a pair of fangs was a matter of simple addition. The authorities would see Wilson as the obvious culprit in an attempted murder.

There was a radical solution, but it meant breaking a promise.

Wilson debated the decision for a mere second. House must not die, and Wilson turned House's beautiful throat to himself, drawing back his own lips in preparation. His vow to House not to touch, its intent clear in never to touch _this_ way, was now all but broken. But Wilson also believed that without House in his life, he could not survive another day in the human world, or the vampire one. Eternal life without him would be no life at all. For the present and any future he cared to look at, House was the only reason he still wished to exist in it.

Wilson wasn't supposed to feel it, but it could only be love, couldn't it? What else was there for a vampire to gain from flesh, except a temporary quenching of his beastly hunger?

Wilson pulled House onto his lap until his own abdomen was spooned against House's long back, then bent over and whispered into his deaf ear. "I'm sorry."

He bit his own tongue to bring forth his own dead but life-giving blood, then sunk his own fangs into House's neck, using Donald's punctures to guide his own fangs inside, deeply, until he could feel the sharp tips of them slip easily into the tiny holes in the artery. Pierced a-new, House's blood began to flow once more, while Wilson's blood mixed with it. Only a little was needed to save the life of this human. Wilson forced his own blood down the hollow points of his fangs and it entered House's purple-cast over, blood and oxygen deprived arteries and veins, stirring within the heart and venturing forth from there to his blood starved tissues, gradually bringing forth warmth and vitality. Renewing his flesh back to its former human beauty.

Almost without delay, Wilson could feel House's heartbeat gaining power, his blood system strengthening and rushing to every part of his body, shocking his deprived extremities awake. Soon House's bleached face colored over to pink, a far prettier shade on him than the plaster of near death. Immediately, with the fresh pain and the subconscious terror of the alien invasion, House stirred and began to struggle, but Wilson held his arms at his sides, keeping House still while his own blood could work its magic. As much as he hated to do it, it was vital for his love's survival.

But it was taking too long. Wilson drove his teeth even deeper into House's neck and to his heartbreak, House cried out in his semi-conscious state. Yes, Wilson recalled, it hurt the victim very much when the victim was awake enough to be aware of it. But it was necessary if he wanted House to live beyond tonight.

House struggled to wakefulness and began to fight and moan in earnest when his demon-doped mind came to understand that the terrible thing was happening all over again. But House was still very weak, and Wilson easily held him fast.

Wilson let as much of his own fluid as he dared, in a single go, flow into House's body, then pulled away from the throat. House cried out again because that - the withdrawal - hurt, too. Wilson felt guilt wash over him, then disappear in the cavern that was his vampire soul. But surely if guilt could live there, love could, too?

He tried to reassure him - "House, it's me. It's just me, you're safe. I know it hurts, but I have to do this. I _must _do this. You'll be all right, I promise."

More was needed, however. One more infusion at least. Wilson felt certain the two infusions would be sufficient for House to gain enough strength to survive. Wilson bit down again, closing his eyes to House's soft cry of pain. His ears gathered the agony well enough for his breaking heart, he didn't need to see it as well.

As Wilson kept his blood flowing into House's veins for several more minutes, he also kept his words flowing into his ear in a hypnotic telepathic whisper, pouring out all the care and love a demon beast could possible possess and then give away. _"You will not turn, you won't - I swear. But you need my blood to heal, or you're going to die. This is Wilson, House. It was another vampire who attacked you, but he's dead now, so you'll be okay; you're safe with me. Calm down, baby. You're still yourself, you're still human. I still love you. I'll always love you." _After a few minutes, House stopped fighting to get free, allowing Wilson to hold him while slowly the feeling returned to his rubbery limbs.

House would be weak for a few days as his body utilized the power in Wilson's vampire blood to effect repairs and to immunize itself against further attacks. He would still be human, and still vulnerable, but his body would have greater strength in not only physically fighting off an attack, but repelling the poison of foreign vampire blood and saliva. If there was a next time, House would not be so easily taken down.

Wilson lay on the bed with him, cradling his head against his cold chest, which ached over his own stupidity. What if he had returned even an hour later? House would have already been dead. Wilson petted his love's hair and waited for him to return to full consciousness. He had a lot of explaining to do, and he would need to have a peace offering ready. An expensive bottle of bourbon perhaps? He might even manage to control his outraged stomach long enough to cook a meal for him; House would need to eat. Wilson shuddered at the thought of touching food.

House, still mute and limp in artificial asleep, never-the-less moaned in pain. Wilson held him tighter, kissing his hair over and over. "I'm so sorry, House. I'm so very, very sorry." He wished he still had tears to ease the pain in himself.

Once House was strong enough, Wilson stripped them both of their blood-soiled clothes and ran a warm bath. He stepped into the tub, carrying House with him. Settling House against his chest, he began to wash off the blood. The water turned a dusky brown.

Wilson shampooed both their scalps and, draining the tub and standing up again, he held House under the arms and rinsed both their bodies off in a warm shower spray.

Wilson lowered House onto to the toilet seat, letting his head rest on the sink. He would be okay for a moment as Wilson toweled down. Then he did the same for House, first his hair, face and shoulders. Next, the arms, chest and back. Finally House's muscled legs and groin.

Carrying him to the bed again, Wilson found a fresh pair of pajama bottoms and slipped them up over House's hips. He helped himself to a second pair and a tee-shirt as well. He contemplated pulling a tee-shirt over House's nude chest but, he decided he wanted to leave at least _some_ skin exposed. Wilson liked looking at House and almost never got the opportunity. The full nude House in the bath tub had been a treat that may never come around again, so Wilson forwent the tee-shirt for House, but the pajama bottoms were non-negotiable. If House woke up freshly scrubbed, and lying in his bed butt naked, there would be hell to pay.

While House slumbered in the deep places that Wilson's vampire medicine had taken him, Wilson solved the problem of food by ordering in from a Chinese restaurant.

After several more hours, House was awake and struggling to sit up in bed. From the kitchen, Wilson heard the rustle of the bed sheets and sprinted to his assistance. "Careful. Don't stand up yet or you'll pass out."

But House insisted on trying to sit up so Wilson helped him to a more elevated position, piling thick pillows behind him - at which assistance a conscious House did not balk. But then his eyes were fluttering between open and closed. He was still very groggy.

Wilson quickly reheated some cooling Chinese soup and returned with a spoon. He scooped up some of the atrocious stuff and held it out to House, inches from his mouth. House stared dully at it with sleep-dopey eyes. Finally he opened up his lips and Wilson stuck the spoon in. "Boy, you really are weak." Wilson remarked as he put a second gross spoonful of Won-ton to House's mouth.

House tasted the hot, delicious liquid on his tongue and licked his lips. He finally found strength enough to open his eyes all the way, and was greeted by a bizarre sight.

Wilson was sitting before him on the edge of the bed, an old-fashioned clothes pin attached to his nose, pinching his nostrils together. Wilson explained in a slightly hollow, nasal voice. "This is the only way I can stand being this close to the food."

House had to smile a little. "You make one sorry-ass vampire." He said, picking at the bandage on the left side of his throat.

Wilson slapped his hand away. "Leave it alone. It'll be healed in under a day."

Wilson frowned at House's remark as to his vampire fitness. "I suppose you could do better? Here - " He scooped another spoonful, trying to avert his eyes from the murky broth containing portions of squiggly, limp noodles, thin slabs of pinkish pig flesh, and watery vegetables. " - eat."

"Probably not." House snatched at the spoon with shaky fingers. "I may only be material for a human, but I can still feed myself, _Mother_."

Wilson let him have the spoon and watched for a few minutes as House attempted, and mostly succeeded in doing just that. Some of the soup dribbled down his bare chest, leaving a trail of food bits. Wilson fetched him a roll of toilet paper to wipe himself off, saying "Well, I guess _some _of the food at least is getting to the right spot."

House ate for a few minutes, but the very act quickly tired him out. He yawned widely, put the bowl aside and scooted down under the covers again. "Who was that, anyway?" He finally asked. "Count Carrot-Top? He looked like Archie Andrews."

Wilson removed the clothes pin and rubbed his itching nose. He tried to smile a little in response but the memory of House bleeding and dying under the white claws of the Spider still made him cold with fear. The two consolations were that Spider had not succeeded, and that Wilson had killed him, greatly enjoying the foul deed. "He's dead, and his name doesn't matter anymore." Not to anyone, anywhere, ever again.

"So, _not_ a friend if I understand my vampires correctly." House said as he turned onto his right side, trying to get comfortable, Wilson shifting a little to give him more room. "I don't imagine fellow vampires usually eat their friend's pets."

Wilson looked grim. He said sadly, "Vampires don't befriend one another. And you are not my pet."

House stared up at him, about to dispute it, but something very intense, an unspoken thing heavily underlined in Wilson's eyes told him not to, and he nodded instead. "If you say so."

Wilson so much wanted to lean over and kiss him goodnight, but there were still sharpened pencils about. "Get some rest. I'll be here when you wake up." He said, tasting it for any emotional satisfaction that might be had. No way, not even in the same ball-park were kind words as good as a passionate kiss.

Humans had it over on vampires in that regard. When they fell in love, it often started with words. When vampires sought out love, all words remained empty, wind-blown deserts. Wilson had no idea how he could nurture this intense love he felt for House if all they would ever exchange were vacant mouthing's. But, this was how he remembered humans sometimes communicated their love - with words. So even if the syllables did nothing for him, they would bring something to House. "I do love you, you know."

House opened his eyes, looking up at Wilson again. "I love you, too," House said, making Wilson's pebble heart quiver and then sink when House added, "but you scare the hell out of me."

Wilson looked away. So much for the nurturing value of words. "I don't mean to. I don't _want_ to."

House sighed, closing his eyes. "You're a vampire. vampires are scary things."

"I'm not a _thing_, exactly."

"You're not human."

"No. But you didn't know that did you? Until I showed you."

"Well, now I know. You kill people."

"Everybody dies. And I'm not human, but I'm not a normal vampire. I know that because I don't want to harm a hair on your head. I'm in love with you. I love you more than _anything_ on this earth. So either that makes you unique among your kind, or me among mine."

"Stop saying that."

"Why. It's okay to say it when I'm alive, but not okay when I'm mostly dead?"

"You never said it while you were alive."

"Thought it, then. I thought it a lot."

House seemed irritated at that, and sat up. "And another thing - how in the _hell _does me having your blood in my veins save me from that other guy?"

Wilson honestly didn't know precisely how it worked. Hell-ish? Partly that? Even vampires didn't think Satan was anyone special. But the blood thing - it had to be part paranormal for sure. That much he did believe. Wilson shrugged. "I don't know. No vampire knows. I guess in all the world there has to be one mystery that even the great House will never solve."

"Well thank you for saving my life, Dracula, but the next time you decide to top me up with your own fuel - _don't_."

"It isn't hurting you."

House was so tired. He wanted to sleep. Wilson, on the other hand, wanted to talk. Figures even as a vampire, Wilson wouldn't know how to shut up. "But it did change me." It was half question.

Wilson wanted to say no, but he had insisted on truths as much as humanly, and vampirely, possible so - "Yes. But it made you stronger. It might even ease your leg pain."

House couldn't feel much of a difference. On the other hand, still being a live didn't suck either. "Well, next time, at least ask."

That was a compromise, and it made Wilson feel much better. Maybe if there were only going to be words, hope might still be found among them now and then. Love would have to wait its turn.

-

-

While House slept, Wilson took a small pairing knife and cut a small gash in his wrist. He let the blood flow into a glass for a few minutes until he had enough. Then he sprinkled it all along the perimeter of the apartment, to discourage other vampires from trespassing. The blood would seep into the wood, the carpet, the linoleum, and disappear, becoming invisible. But to a vampires mighty nose, its odor would issue a warning from him, from James, the one whom Judith had made; the very powerful vampire who had killed Spider as easily as he tied his left shoe.

For now, House would be safe, and that meant Wilson had time enough to take care of a few other loose ends on his way to work. He would explain to Cuddy how ill House was, so she would stay off his back for the next few days. To hell with any cases. For the next week, House was all his.

James flew through the dark until he came to where he knew they hung out during their Hunts, his nose doing the rest. These ladies never bathed, preferring the fetid stink of the un-washed un-dead, a particularly noxious assault on anyone's olfactory organ, vampire or human.

These pungent mongrels hunted nightly - greedy little bitches. James slipped into their hovel atop a building in the slums. It was a run-down one bedroom dump in an abandoned apartment building infested with bugs and rats, which they had "annexed" from a human vagrant. By killing him, of course, for a quick Feed.

They were at a Feed now, and James watched from the shadows for a moment, repulsed by their lip-smacking vulgarity and atrocious technique (James hoped _he_ didn't eat like that), until one of the careless vamp's became aware that they were no longer dining alone.

"Good evening, ladies." He greeted them. "Don't take that to heart. I just wanted to let you know that I killed your sire tonight. The Spider." James allowed the glee he had felt over Donald's death, and which he had hidden from House, now fly fast and free around the room, his voice a demon's song of wicked joy. "It was in every way delightful." He stepped forward into the feeble light of the moon's single ray squeezing between the boarded up windows. Even it didn't seem to want to be in the same room with these obscene examples of vampire woman-hood.

Wilson intended to make this fast, but not out of mercy. Rather, he didn't want to be late for work. There were people out there; living, breathing, deodorized humans, who needed his doctor skills tonight.

vampires don't usually Feed on other vampires, but he was willing to make an exception to rid the earth of these thoroughly debased skanks. He would have fed off Donald, had Donald not touched his human treasure, but James could not have withstood partaking by proxy of the Feed-lusts from Donald's memory of the fear and agony he had put House through. Wilson was sure that would have driven him insane.

But Donald's idiot followers - they were different. True, James expected some unsavory traits would "download" from the epitome of what they were to his own substance, but their combined powers and knowledge would exceed the possible downside of Feeding on three ill-mannered, inconsequential vamp's. Besides, he would be able to filter the worst of their gutter-spoil out, and eventually shed anything undesirable into the left-over blood of his next meal.

Anxious to add the strengths of the three female vampires' minds, and the power of their un-dead flesh to his own already formidable strength, James rubbed his hands together with gusto and announced - "Wow - am I hungry."

-

-

When Wilson walked in just before dawn, House was up and about, leaning on his cane. Wilson suspected, as he watched House limp passed him on the way to the kitchen from the bathroom, that presently the cane was more to assist with keeping his dizzy head steady than his weight off his aching thigh.

Wilson glanced anxiously around the room, visually checking the floors near the walls. No blood drops. His barrier was invisible now, thank goodness, and was hopefully doing its thing. Later, once he had learned how to utilize the vamp's powers, he would make a new barrier with his new, stronger blood.

House took a cola from the fridge. "Been out hunting?" He asked as he headed for the comfort of the couch, and the mindless relaxation of bad television.

Wilson swallowed. "Well, yes." Damn it to hell all this truth-telling.

"How many people do you murder every week?"

Wilson felt colder, suddenly, in the warm, fire-lighted room. He also felt a little hurt at the word murder, though it was essentially correct. "Only as many as minimally required to live. Two or so." _Well, three, but they don't count._

House, dry after so many hours spent in bed, drained the can. "How many had to die to save me?"

Wilson didn't know where House was going with this. "None. You were saved by my blood." _You ungrateful ass. _

"But your blood is made up of _other's_ blood. _Human's_ blood, those now being _dead_ humans."

"Would you rather I be dead?" Wilson wished prayers, his or others, would be of some use to the un-dead. Had anyone ever written a petition to God for a vampire? They send people to hell with supplications, why not us?

House stared at him for a bit before dropping his eyes away, locking them on his empty can instead. "No."

Wilson sat down beside him. "I try to be choosey in my Feeds and I don't mean fussy. I try to pick those who are...who would eventually hurt others if I left them alive."

House turned his head to look straight at him again. "So you're sort of a Robin Hood vampire."

"No. Robin Hood chose his path. Mine was given _to_ me. An involuntary career." Wilson sat back, feeling depressed and hopeless. "If you want me to leave, just say it."

"I don't want you to leave." House said. "I'm just trying to understand the logistics."

"There's nothing mysterious about it,.." _Mostly_. "..I'm still Wilson, only I eat bad guys and can't get a tan anymore."

House stared into the empty cola tin. "Do you remember them?" House looked at him but now there was simple curiosity. "The ones you've eaten."

No. Never. Only Donald will ring out in his mind, probably forever. That kind of hate for another doesn't fade over-night, or even a century. Wilson tried to explain. "Do you remember any specific cut of bacon you had for breakfast last week, or the name of the waitress who served it to you?"

"That's different."

"Why?"

"I never met the pig, and the waitress was memorable only for her nice tits."

"Did you _care_ that you hadn't met the pig? Meals fill your gut, they don't make any other lasting impression."

House pursed his lips. "Fine." For now he appeared to be satisfied with Wilson's answers. "So I guess _you're_ not hungry, but speaking of breakfast..."

Wilson felt light-hearted again. Being with House hadn't changed much either. There were still miserable lows and sky-rocketing highs, and they were always switching places, too. House was an exhausting, but loveable human. However, Wilson was certain that all these emotions were going to leave a painful scar somewhere. But he supposed a painful scar was better than feeling nothing. He was beginning to sound like House.

Wilson stood up. "Okay." He clipped the clothes-pin back on his nose.

House rolled his eyes.

"Hey - " Wilson said. " - you want breakfast? Then I need this. And _you_ will have to cook up the Babe slices. I think I can handle the eggs without turning green."

XXXXXXX

Part IV asap


	4. Chapter 4

TEETH MARKS

Part IVfff

By GeeLadyff

Time-line: Season 6. **Alternate Universe**/**Vampire life...ff**

Summary: _**"At last this is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh"...Wilson quoted, adding "And blood of my blood." House would live. Nothing else mattered.**_

Pairing: House/Wilson. Wilson is a little OC here, but then he's not really himself, is he?

Rating: NC-17 **SLASH** ADULT. Angst. (You have been warned).f

Disclaimer: The blue-eyed babe with the cane - _**sigh!**_ - is not mine.

_***Story idea by graceasaur! Thanks my friend.**_

"Do I still frighten you?" Wilson asked him one night. Movie night, if either of them didn't have work of if House didn't have a case. It was late and the television was muted to the noise and spilling yellow guts of aliens as Ripley sprayed them with bullets.

"I never said you frightened me, I said you scared the hell out of me. There's a difference."

"Okay."

"Frightened suggests cowering. Do I look cowering to you?"

Wilson took his eyes casually over House's frame. The muscled arms encased in the short cotton of his black tee-shirt, his long, lovely legs hidden from sight in his far too baggy jeans. "No, you look delicious, and I don't mean in the food sense - in the hot tasty sex sense."

House blushed, then tried to cover his embarrassment by being snippy. "Stop that. Scaring the hell out of me means I know your potential for harm to other people and to me. You say you won't ever hurt me and so far you've proved yourself. But I knew Wilson for fifteen years, and on occasion _he_ hurt me. You've been around for a little over a year, and that's just not long enough to bronze your reputation."

"Other than me never physically harming you, unless it's to save your life - and let's not forget I've already proved that - what else do you need to see that would convince you?"

"Honesty is a good place to start. You hid your new-found persona for a year."

"You think coming out as bisexual is hard? Try vampirism." Wilson would do anything, though, to prove himself. "But, okay. Honesty, huh? I want you to take off all of your clothes for me, because tonight I want to make love to you."

"I _said_ stop that."

"You said _honesty_."

"Well,...be honest about something else."

"I don't want to. Right now, that's what I'm feeling and fantasizing about - fucking you mindless. And, if I might say so, you have no idea what you're missing."

House cracked a beer, partly because he was thirsty, partly to occupy his hands, and partly because the room was getting warm. "What did you do with Donald?"

"Stop trying to change the subject."

"Why won't you just answer the question?"

Donald had passed into vampire history; which was no history at all, since no vampire cared about another. His name would not be missed. Donald was dust. Grit on a pile of cow piss. Fitting. "I showed him the sunrise. I want to see you naked."

"You want to see everyone naked. In some ways, you're still _all_ Wilson I guess."

"I want to hear you moan my name when you come."

House frowned at his room-mate's newly developed bluntness. "Wilson was way more subtle in his gay references."

"Now he's just honest. I want to feel you moving beneath me and smell your skin up close and tongue-fuck you."

From his perch at the other end of the couch, Wilson could feel the rush of heat wash through House from neck to toe. One or two more ought to do it. "I'm so goddamn horny for you I can't think of anything else. You crowd out everyone and everything, House. I love your face and crave your body. I want to suck your cock and nose your sweet balls. I want you so much, so _fucking_ much, I'm hard all the time." Wilson now sensed the rise in blood pressure from the delectable human and knew House was probably getting hard, like he already was. Amazing that even his borrowed blood felt the heady drive to nail House against a wall.

House shifted a little in his seat. "Stop it, Wilson." No snippiness, no anger. Confusion. Curiosity.

Wilson could flex his vampire powers. A few more words, a touch here and there, and he could overcome any resistance - overwhelm House's defenses in seconds, make him beg for it. But he didn't. He held back. Only by invite would he make the next move.

But Wilson promised himself that, once House's mouth, the flick of his tongue, his dilated pupil, or quickened respirations said _Yes_, Wilson would not hold back a moment longer. He had been waiting for the right time to induce a seduction. Finally, finally the night was just maybe upon them. Oh the things even the devil has never tasted...

"Don't you want to be fucked, House? Don't you want to have someone catering to your every pleasure all night long?"

House could hear Wilson in the room and in his mind. Wilson occupied only a small square of the couch yet everything else in the room was no longer in focus. Every sound was only Wilson's voice, every smell was the soap in the fibres of Wilson's shirt. Every sensation existed because of him and for him and by him, and House could feel his heart answer and the fabric of his jeans tighten. He grew uncomfortable there on the couch cushions. The bed would be so much more pleasant. Softer, warmer, intimate, wonderful...

House shook his head. "I said stop it!" He glared at Wilson. "Was that some vampire mind trick? Are you trying to get me to bend over and then not even remember?"

Wilson's gaze never wavered. "Yes, it is a mind trick. I could make you want me, make you shed your clothes for me, and give me anything I wanted, any and all parts of you, _you_ would hand over to my specific pleasures without a word of protest or why. I would fuck you and you would _love it._ I _could_ do that if I wished. But you wanted honesty, so although I have been honest in telling you all this, I'm also going to be honest and upright and all that and _not_ do it. I've showed you a particular power that I have now, and how easy it would be for me to screw you anytime I wanted. But I won't and do you know why? Because I want you to want it, too."

Wilson stood up, picking up the dirty dishes from dinner. "You wanted honesty. There it is."

That seemed to rile House more than anything. Not bothering with his cane, he pushed himself onto his feet. "You have no right to-"

Wilson paused, waiting for the rest of his room-mate's humorously put across spiel, but when it never came, he turned back toward the living room. House was standing bent double, with both of his hands wrapped around his right thigh like claws, squeezing, his eyes shut against a break-through pain that obviously wasn't kidding around.

Forgetting the dishes, Wilson put them down and walked over to him. Putting one hand on his curved spine. "Bad this time?"

House just nodded. That he was unable to articulate even a word in reply told Wilson this one was especially bad. Nolan's regime of anti-inflammatory and Ativan was middling' to useless in controlling the worst of House's pain. He felt pain slightly less often than when he had been on the Vicodin, but when it did come, it rolled over him like a tank.

"Come on, lie down."

House shook his head. "Bed." He ground out between clenched teeth.

That meant House could tell that the agony was going to last a while, and he wanted something soft beneath his knee. The couch just didn't make the grade.

Wilson steered House toward the bedrooms down the hall, allowing House to lean almost the whole weight of his body on his own shoulders, the vampire's physical power hardly feeling a thing. Wilson tried turning House left into his bedroom, but House shook his head, and they moved instead to the right, toward the second bedroom. This was the one that used to be a study, and that once upon a time after that, a shrine to his late girlfriend. Once Wilson had been drained of humanity and filled with the hunger of a vampire, the dark side of things had taken care of her once and for all. His memories of Amber were quickly reduced to mere cognitive facts, and the pictures and memorabilia were removed.

But Wilson was still disappointed that House had again chosen the second bedroom. Back when House was in ignorance about Wilson's new night-time hobby, they had shared a bed and, though they had not also shared bodies, it had felt both acceptable, almost natural to them both. But once Wilson had bared his teeth and poured out his pseudo-soul, they didn't even share a bed anymore.

Wilson missed House's warm flesh. Previously, whenever House had fallen asleep, Wilson would creep ever closer inches by little inches until he could feel House's soft breath on his cheek. It was as close to an angelic experience as he was likely to get now-a-days.

House lay down on his own bed, rolling onto his left side, still gripping his thigh as though, if he didn't, it was going to explode. He was already soaked in perspiration from the pain and shaky from his own racing heart.

"What can I get for it?" Wilson asked. This had not happened in a while and usually House took care of it. A hot compress, a hot bath, extra's of Nolan's almost useless pills.

House shook his head violently, trying to shake off his brain's persistent efficiency of soaking up each and every tremor of agony that traveled up his thigh to his sensory system. "Nnnnng!"

Wilson stared at him until he could no longer stand it. "House, you're going to pass out if we don't do something."

House was now rocking a little on the mattress, a self comfort thing to encourage endorphins that didn't seem to be having much effect. "I'm...open to...suggestions." He whispered between gasps.

Wilson could put an end to it, at least for one day. "May I touch you?"

Even though House was in agony, he was still wary enough to crack one eye open. "Why?"

"I can ease this. It won't hurt, and it's only temporary. But I can't do it without your permission." Honesty. Trustworthiness. Loving tender affection. Here, all of them applied.

House thought about it for a few seconds, biting his lip. He shook his head.

Wilson tried not to look disappointed. "Okay. Well, call if you need something." He returned to the banality of the television. Not many minutes later, from the bedroom "Wilson."

Wilson returned. "Do you need some more Ativan?"

House, white and shaking, shook his head. "What was that you said about ease?"

Wilson walked over to the bed. "You need to lie on your back."

"It's my leg that hurts." He had a death grip on his thigh with both hands.

"I know, but this has more to do with mind control than muscle massage."

With great effort, House rolled onto his back, but his leg refused to straighten out. "Don't think it's going to cooperate."

"Don't worry. Soon, your leg with be in the palm of my hand." Wilson kneeled on the bed, making the mattress dip and House gasp "Sorry." After a particularly painful spasm ended and the regular agony of pain was back, Wilson managed to catch House's eye. "I have to lie full on you."

"Fine. Whatever." House was beyond worrying about the little things like _my best friend is about to lie on top of me in a very intimate manner. "Just Relax." _Wilson said, his voice had suddenly changed its song from clinical professionalism to a ribbon of silk.

House felt the strangest sensation once Wilson had laid down and the vampire's body was in full contact with his own. "Weird." He said.

"What's weird?" Wilson would need House to stop talking in a minute, but for now he liked the "bedroom" chatter.

"Don't laugh but you feel like a cool breeze from a deep lake."

Wilson did laugh. "Sorry - not laughing at you, but I was just thinking that _you_ feel like a warm carpet lying in front of a burning fireplace."

House said no more.

For a few seconds, Wilson let himself luxuriate in the enveloping heat from House's body, then he got down to the job. "Close your eyes. As I said this is going to feel a little weird, and the pain will change, sort of, but still don't move, 'cause it's only temporary." Wilson took in a deep breath, not for himself since he needed none, but as a habitual preparation for concentration. He thought about the pain House was in, and imagined it flowing out of House's thigh into his abdomen. It must have been having the desired effect because House sucked in a breath.

Wilson did not so much ignore House but use him to channel his own mind. He entered the source of House's pain that was now under his command, seeping into the greater muscle and blood mass of his abdominal muscles. Wilson gentle snuggled his face into the side of House's throat. House was now at his complete mercy, but no mercy was necessary.

This was divine intervention from something evil, not something evil about to invade the divine. That beautiful throat was another sexual part of House and in every way as tantalizing as the others. Wilson thought perhaps he had discovered a new level of vampirism; a vampire who's Feed is love, rather than blood. It would be a vast improvement on the species, he thought.

Wilson now settled into his task, took his own vampire un-deadness and let it flow into that terrible, old pain. He welcomed it, invited it, surrounded it, consuming its force in the deathly air of his own more terrible lack of life. Wilson spoke to it in his mind yet via his un-dead state of extreme power; smothering it; slaying it; one horrible wave of agony at a time. Wilson now felt the pain as though it were his own, though much less intensely than House would have, being that his own cells were dormant until his next Feed. Dormant but not impotent. Empty of fresh blood but now full of House's well worn suffering.

This stuff House had carried every day of his life since the infarction. If Wilson weref still human, it might have killed him, or made him weep. His respect for his friend grew immeasurably in that moment.

Carrying the agony of being un-dead, he now realized, was only a little bit worse.

The sensation of House's body touching him in so many places was more than enough to dilute the pain until it became inert, until it left House's body for his own and, struggling to save its own life, finally died, fading away in a few last desperate twitches of fury and betrayal. For a moment, he lay still, just listening to House's steady, even breaths. Then a great sigh of relief escaped House's lips, causing Wilson to raise his own face from the divine contours of House's neck. "How is it?"

House blinked in disbelief at the ceiling, as the last tiny bursts of pain in his leg disappeared with little invisible "pops" of uselessness, as though they had simply floated out of him, their last hopes bursting into nothing against the roof over his head. "Incredible." He whispered. "There's no pain at all now."

Reluctantly, Wilson lifted his hips off of House's, and rolled off. "Good. You'll be pain-free for about nine hours."

House looked over at him like he was seeing the vampire Wilson, maybe for the first time, all wrapped up in the nice red bow that was made of the substance of human Wilson. Evil wonder inside a mundane container. An out-of-this-world yet ordinary, perfect little package. "Thank you."

-

-

Wilson's late evening snack of a cup of re-warmed pig blood was interrupted when House asked - "So what's it like being a vampire?"

"Um..." Wilson was sitting in the living room chair rather than on the couch beside House, his appetite for hemoglobin as nauseating for House and was House's appetite for French fries was to him. "...it's mostly lonely. And I'm hungry most of the time. Plus you spend a lot of time trying to keep warm."

"You feel cold?"

Wilson considered it. "Well, no, not exactly. I feel the absence of heat. I spent most of my life warm, now that I'm cold blooded and cold skinned, I don't need the heat,.." Wilson set his mug down and gave House a telling twist of his lip, "but it's nice to wrap myself in it once in a while."

House didn't rise to the bait. "How often do you eat, or drink? _Kill?"_

Wilson was hoping House wouldn't bring this up again. "We already discussed this."

"I want more detail."

"That's a little morbid, House."

"You're the one drinking _blood_."

"I'm not talking about this again."

House stared at him. "Then how about taking me on one of your midnight runs to the," he made little bunny quotes in the air, "grocery store?"

"You want to watch me on a Feed?"

"I'm curious about the logistics. How do you hunt? How do you pick out your victims, how do you decide who's "less deserving" - to use your words - than anyone else?"

"I read their intent."

House stared at him, looking suddenly very uncomfortable. "You read minds?"

"No, I can't read thoughts, it's more like understanding the focus _of_ their thoughts."

"Sounds like BS. How about an example."

"Well, one guy I ate two weeks ago had the intent of going home and killing his wife."

"And you knew he was going to do this, there was no doubt in your mind that he was going to commit murder?"

"None."

"Why?"

Wilson sighed. "Because he was full of that intent, like it was all he could think about. He craved it, even. The idea of killing his wife had been on his mind for a long, and he was comfortable about it."

"Wife beater?"

"Probably, but I don't know for sure. I imagine he thought she had cheated or something. That's usually how those situations play out in the newspaper."

"So, you only eat murderers? Not sure New Jersey has that many."

"You'd be surprised, and not just those who have killed, I can't always read that specifically, but those who are focused on doing so."

"So you're sort of an un-dead bat-man. _Bat_-man, get it?"

Wilson raised one eyebrow to the lame joke. "Yes. Vampires do not turn into bats. Though we do fly."

Now House really didn't believe him. "You _fly_?"

"Yeah. Some nights I just do it for fun. It's about the only positive in this whole life. Flying's cool."

House stared at him like Wilson had just grown the bat-wings to go with the new moniker.

"I could take you with me some time. Give you a tour of the city from the air."

House shook his head emphatically. "No thanks - I already saw that movie."

Wilson shrugged. "Suit yourself." The conversation was apparently over as House took himself off to bed. "'Nite."

Feeling a little let down, Wilson replied - "Good night, House." His human friend hadn't asked him about the loneliness as he had hoped. Such a discussion might lead to other, more intimate words once more, which is what he really wanted to share.

But maybe House didn't want to hear about the things vampires did or did not feel, or even to know that vampires are as lonely as humans often were. Wilson himself often pondered it. To give up a weak, human existence for such an eternal power as he had been given, yet to be still tied down by the frailest of human failings - for lack of a better word - _sucked_.

Maybe his price for destroying Donald was just this; his friend whom he loved was now repulsed by his murderous habits. Or repulsed by him alone. Wilson got up and followed House into this bedroom. He opened the door without knocking and caught House just climbing under the blankets. House was startled by the abrupt intrusion. "What?"

Wilson stared at him. "I may be a killer, and I may drink blood, but I'm still pathetic as only Wilson can be. I have to know - do you love me?"

House fiddled with his blankets. "Yes."

"But you're still scared?"

"Yeah, but not of what you think."

"About my vampirism?"

"In the beginning it was that, but you saved my life. You've proved you don't want to physically hurt me. I'm okay with that. But you're still Wilson, as you pointed out. That means you might change your mind and leave."

"You mean you're afraid I would cheat?"

"Vampire hearing obviously isn't super-human. I said I'm afraid you would _leave_."

Wilson recalled his self when human walking away from House when he needed him the most; when his world had shattered. That terrible time two short years ago. "So now I have to prove that?"

House nodded, then shrugged. "Not sure how you're going to do that..."

"You know, you could hurt me, too. Just because I'm still like Wilson doesn't mean you're not still House. You're skilled at hurting."

"So we have an impasse." House remarked.

Wilson looked sadly at his friend. "So, despite all the fear and mistrust, you love me?"

House nodded. "Of course. You're still my best friend, Doctor Fang."

Wilson said it just because he needed to hear one of those frail humanities. However fragile, he needed his hope. "Mark my words, someday it will be more."

"You think so?"

"It has to be."

"Why?"

Now it was Wilson's turn to shrug. "It just does."

-

-

His frustration of not being allowed to show any physical affection with House worked itself out in the keen need for a Feed. James flew, without purpose or direction, until he spotted a likely candidate. The human being was hurrying through the dark, muttering to himself. James could smell the gunpowder of a recently fired weapon. Who did this man kill, he wondered? Then brushed off the question. It didn't matter. In a moment, the man would be vampire food.

James dived bombed the hapless individual, took his by the throat with one iron-fisted hand and sank his teeth into the flesh.

Suddenly he was flung away from the super-human with all the strength only the un-dead possessed. James stumbled back and looked at his resister. "Your payment is due, James." He hissed. This was Renoir, who had named himself because he adored the dead painter and worshiped at the alter of fine art. Dead artists suited a vampire's tastes. "Donald's soul demands it. And his ladies three."

Wilson spat at the ridiculous statement. "Vampires don't have souls. Spider tried to kill my treasure. Tit for tat."

"And this for that,.." Renoir also liked poetry, though he wasn't very good at it. "One soulless being for another. Still fits. Equal justice, you see."

James could take Renoir easily, now that he knew he needed to up the power more than was necessary for the human he thought he had been attacking. Renoir would need a little more elbow grease to dispose of. "Well? What are you waiting for? Come bring justice."

Out of the shadows of the buildings, three other vampires appeared and joined Renoir on his battle line. James looked at each of them, two males and female, all eyes painted in black soot, all wearing long black coats, their hair woven into the styles of the new and modern un-dead, in dreadlocks or spiked to a comical point. The second male vampire was bald. His whole head was painted black, too. Some vampires were obsessed with un-dead fashion runway. James looked back at Renoir. "Are you so unsure of yourself?"

Renoir didn't rise to the bait of a frail ego. James was a powerful vampire, but he was no match for four males and a female. "It's why I brought the best."

-

-

House heard the loud crash from the kitchen, and groped around in the dark for his cane. He gimped to the kitchen light in the doorway as fast as his leg would let him, finding Wilson sitting in the middle of the floor, legs sprawled, blood trickling from a hundred wounds that House could see. Blood seeped through his torn up shirt from another hundred that he could not. _"Jesus..." _House grabbed a tea-towel from the rack. "What the hell happened?"

"Hell." Wilson could still speak, but the blood wasn't stopping. "I need you to,..."

House was about to suggest a hospital but dismissed the idea, seeing Wilson was a vampire and all. "What?"

"I need to sleep." Wilson gurgled from his dead, un-refreshed blood that was pooling in his throat. "I need warmth and rest." Some vampires used a coffin filled with dirt (very traditional), some crawled inside the furnace room of a building when they needed to heal (free-spirited). James wanted to curl up around House's warm body. He would need a day to heal from this many gashes.

He had managed to hold his own against Renoir and his cronies, but just barely. A few more minutes and Renoir would have had his head or his arms, or all three. Another pint of blood lost and he would not have made it all the way home. But James had escaped with the last of his strength and staggered back to the one being in the world or the underworld that he wanted to see last, if he was indeed "dying". A vampire's death was unlike a human's, but it left him in about the same condition - dust.

"What about stitches?" House asked as he helped Wilson to the bedroom.

"Don't need." Wilson spoke only enough to get his message across from the dying-dead to the living. "I'll h-heal perfectly. Just lie down with me, keep me warm. Please."

House did as he was told, and Wilson curled himself around House's internal heat. That shockingly ninety-eight-point-six degrees of radiating heat all human flesh produced; a simple thing ignored by humans while alive, but envied by the un-dead. Wilson sighed, a reflexive thing since he did not require air except to speak, and sank into the healing pond of House's marvelous flesh. Who needs a hospital when you've got this?

House responded to Wilson's need by hooking his long right leg around the back of Wilson's curled up two, just to make sure all parts of his friend were feeling the heat. Wilson tucked his ice-cold nose against House's neck, making his friend shiver. But House didn't move away, wrapping his arms around him tightly, and Wilson felt immediately stronger, delighting that it was coming from House. Because he did love him, though a vampire, and enough not to balk at this unusual method of treatment. House was his friend, his salvation. No love like this existed anywhere.

"Thank you." Wilson whispered as he drifted off to a vampire's un-real slumber; a state of coma-like stillness. In such a state, his thoughts almost stopped. The feeling, though, the feeling of being so deliciously close to the man he loved beyond measure, that never stilled for a second.

XXXXXXX

Part V asap


	5. Chapter 5

TEETH MARKS

Part V (Final)

By GeeLady

Time-line: Season 6. **Alternate Universe**/**Vampire life...**

Summary: _**"At last this is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh"...Wilson quoted, adding "And blood of my blood." House would live. Nothing else mattered.**_

Pairing: House/Wilson. Wilson is a little OC here, but then he's not really himself, is he?

Rating: NC-17 **SLASH** ADULT. Angst. (You have been warned).

Disclaimer: The blue-eyed babe with the cane - _**sigh!**_ - is not mine.

_***Story idea by graceasaur! Thanks my friend.**_

House endured the cocoon of bloody vampire for eight hours before his leg commanded him to find some pain killers or else. Once he began to shift his limbs, Wilson arose from his sleep of the dead and they peeled their skins from one another, both now brown-stained and sticky with drying blood. Little pebbles of the congealed stuff had worked its way into House's hair and between his fingers. "Gross."

Wilson sat up. He looked a sight, but House gently brushed aside his shredded shirt to reveal a completely healed and intact skin. "That's impossible."

"Vampirism is impossible, but here I am."

"Yeah." House wasn't crazy about either reality. "So how often is this stuff going to happen? Me or you almost dying 'cause of your club friends?"

"They're not my friends. And I don't know."

House gimped to the bathroom and popped his Ativan and various other drugs meant to keep him painless - hah! - or mentally together, a real neat trick when there's a fabled creature of the night sitting on his bed, peeling off clothing stiffened with dried blood.

When Wilson removed his pants and boxers, House averted his eyes. It was just too goddamn real to be so unreal. "So, the game is either you get a new hobby, or one of us becomes un-killable so we can kick the asses of any more of these blood suckers before one or the other, or _both_, of us gets killed." In the mirror he got a glimpse of a rather nice set of naked legs, as Wilson pulled on a clean pair of jeans.

House turned back once Wilson was again partly dressed. Wilson had foregone a shirt. Either being a vampire had bulked him up, or Wilson had been working out lately. House suddenly felt very annoyed with his muscle and ivory-blessed room-mate. "Any ideas, Louis?"

"One or two, but they're dangerous."

"More dangerous than this? Hit me."

Wilson padded into the living room and House followed. "As unappetizing as it is, I could do a Feed on a vampire more powerful than me, or a number of them. I would acquire their power, their strengths."

"So no human has to die and you become Super-Vam'? Sounds like win-win."

Wilson entered the kitchen and out of old, old habit, began tidying up the counter, putting things away and straightening the appliances. "Then there's the dangers."

"Danger-_**s**_? Figures."

"I would also acquire their weaknesses, and their debasements. It could result in not much of me being me anymore." Wilson turned to House. "You could lose me altogether."

House didn't look happy, which in reverse made Wilson feel a little better. "And that means I could lose _you_." Wilson added. "And I'm not willing to risk that."

House threw up his hands, but without much enthusiasm, his left hand still gripping the cane. "So we're screwed."

Wilson thought about it, his eyes somehow coming to rest on the two bite marks on the left side of House's throat, the scars made more prominent by his own fangs re-opening the wounds in order to save House's life with his own non-living life-blood. "I'm sorry I had to do that to you." He said, nodding to House's throat.

House automatically raised his left hand and probed at the scars with the tips of his fingers. "Don't worry about it."

Wilson knew House hid the marks beneath turtle neck sweaters which he had begun to wear again. Thus far, no one at his place of work had noticed the vampire bite on his neck, or if they had, dismissed it as House screwing with their minds.

Wilson loved and hated the marks. Hated the scarring because the greatest damage had come from Donald's fangs gone deep in an especially cruel Feed. Loved them because his own fangs had gone in after and saved House's life. The marks told two stories. House had been attacked and was scarred for life (again), but also through Wilson's necessary and very intimate contact, House had become in a very private and intimate way, attached to Wilson. House now belonged to James Wilson the Vampire, Esq'., though House was not truly aware of that fact. Not yet.

"There's only one way to keep us safe forever without risking my present...nature." Wilson said, unable to think of a more accurate phrase. "I'd have to capture and drink the blood of the strongest vampire in the world. I'd have to bring Yolanda here, somehow, Feed and then kill her."

House flicked his eyes from side to side. "That's all, huh?"

Wilson shrugged. There was nothing for it. It was that or run and hide for the rest of House's life or his own existence, whichever lasted the longest. Right now it was even numbers. "I would have to issue a challenge."

"You mean see how many losers either of you can fill up on in a minute? That sort of thing?"

Wilson allowed a small smile. "No. I'd be challenging her throne. Her so-called ruler-ship - her queen-hood."

"So if you win, you get to be the queen_**'s**_ and mince happily ever after?"

"Something like that."

"Okay." House took a deep breath. Life sucked and apparently, for a lot of people, so did death. "Let's do that."

-

-

Wilson sent his challenge out on the "air" waves. Most vamp's didn't carry cell phones since most vamp's didn't have any friends or loved ones of any description. For the most part the word spread through vampire thought or, among those of lesser powers, via good old fashioned gossip.

But Wilson heard nothing back. "Maybe Yolanda doesn't care?" House said to him one night many weeks later. Wilson didn't believe it for a second. Donald had been one of her favorite wind-up toys, there had to come recompense for his murder.

House was preoccupied with a case and was spending a great deal of his time at work, which made for some lonely nights for Wilson (those nights he wasn't working or on a Feed). But it also meant that House was snuggled in the safety of daylight and, even when he was there until very late, surrounded with the security of people. Safety in numbers, and no vampire in his or her right mind would try an assault in such a public and confining space as a hospital.

-

-

House stepped under the hot spray. It had been an exhausting day and his back and leg and most other parts of him ached. The men's shower was empty and he had as much hot water as he wanted, and all the time in the world. It was mid-afternoon, and he had sent his team home. Given them the following day off, in fact, providing Cuddy didn't come up with another case.

The patient had been a man in his thirties who'd arrived suffering from systemic muscle pain accompanied by bloodshot eyes. Foreman and he had argued back an forth on autoimmune and staphylococcal toxic shock syndrome respectively, until the fellow happened to mention to Thirteen that he had taken his wife up to the cabin.

Thirteen had at first assumed a cabin in the woods. House had pointed out that "Woods or no woods, no target rash and no tick means it's not Lyme disease."

"The target rash doesn't show up on everyone." Taub pointed out.

"But in ninety-nine percent of cases it _does_." House replied.

"Maybe the rash is in a place no one would think to look." Thirteen said, subtly reminding House of the case she had solved by shaving a boys head, and locating the rash.

Reminding her in return - "This guy is _bald_." House answered.

Where-after quiet little Taub had spoken up. "But I'll bet he's not bald _every_where."

A second physical examination of the man had revealed an infected rash on the underside of his penis that was spreading around its base and up to the crease between his abdomen and the roll of sagging stomach fat.

Doxycycline had been duly introduced into the patient's IV, but House had still been left with lingering doubts. Until the patient himself bored House for a few moments with talk of he and his wife's cabin trip. "She loves walking on the beach."

House had sighed heavily, dying to leave. "Where is this cabin of yours and your darling wife's?"

"Corsica."

_"France??"_ House had managed to maintain enough control of his temper not to cuff the guy upside the head. And not to spout at Thirteen over what an idiot she was. All he said to her was - "Next time someone talks about their vacation spot, make sure you know which continent it's on. He doesn't have Lyme Disease, he has Sandfly fever."

"We're already treating him for Lyme Disease..." Foreman said.

"I know, and the Doxycycline won't hurt him any. Let the bag run out. If his crotch is clearing up by morning rounds, then we know for sure it's not Lyme Disease because it doesn't respond that fast." They sent the patient home with a few Tylenol and a follow-up appointment with his regular physician.

Case solved.

-

-

Wilson was very concerned about the lack of response from Yolanda. It was possible she might have been destroyed. That would be nice, but he doubted it. No vampires had shown up.

And, an hour after House had called to say he was on his way home, House hadn't shown up either. It was daylight. House was safe. He had probably stopped to pick up beer or one of his disgusting pepperoni and mushroom pizza's.

Beer; barley grain spiked with hops and sugar, boiled and cooled, then left to "ferment". Pizza: Slices of preserved, heavily spiced cow flank, and fungi grown in cow shit, slapped on round dough, covered in white strings of gooey milk product - essentially living bacteria (at least until the oven baked them to death). Humans really had a thing for rotting bacteria. It was difficult to imagine he had ever consumed anything so grotesque.

He tried House's cellular. There was no answer but House's voice saying: "Don't leave a message - I won't call you back anyway."

He replaced the hand-held on its small charger. Wilson had gone on a good Feed two nights ago so he was set for the week. About the only human food he could still consume and actually enjoy was strawberry herb tea, and he set water on to boil.

Truth was, he was bored. Vampire life seemed to be plagued with many of the same conundrums as human life was, such as: what do you do when you're home alone and missing the one you love? Television was a poor substitute for human contact, or vampire for that matter.

House was late, but Wilson could relax knowing that as long as it was daylight, he was safe. There wasn't a vampire on the planet who would venture out under the sun and risk crisping his skin until he was repulsive. Vampires are, for the most part, terribly vain creatures. James laughed at himself. Among their ilk, Wilson the human had fit right in.

Sunshine, the bane of all toothy varmints, but loved by humans the world over.

Wilson stared at the blue-orange flame wiggling its fingers out from beneath the kettle's blackened bottom rim, and licking back streaks up the polished curve of metal. Yes, the sun was adored by the living but, he was suddenly horrified to remember, the second-to-dead could also bask under it's harmful rays without it raising nary a mark on their white, paper-thin skin.

Renfelds. Auxiliators. Human youths pressed into a vampire's service through mind control and weakened condition. Renfelds were a vampire's human minions. Powerful vamp's often had more than one. Auxiliators; living, walking, talking _snacks_. Repeatedly bitten and drank from by their masters or their masters followers. Renfelds _could_ go out in the day and Yolanda, as the so-called queen, probably had a small army of them.

Wilson looked at the window with frightened eyes that understood as clearly as a sunburst; that comprehended like no other that House was _not_ safe. Wilson could tell by the pink streaming in between the blinds that, though the sun was setting, it hadn't yet done so all the way. He had no choice but to wait. Wilson cursed himself, trying House's cell again and getting the same recording. "House, call me the second you get this. Stay at work until I get there. Don't go anywhere with anyone! Even if you think you know them. Call me!"

Wilson returned to the living room window, peeking through to see that the sun was half way gone. There was still too much of it. He shook for House, the fear he felt, not for himself, but for his cherished human, was a private quake.

He peeked through again. _Still_ just a little too much painful light. He didn't care if he got singed, but too bad of a burn would make it impossible for him to ever venture out again. As quickly and as thoroughly as vampire skin repaired itself from other injuries, it was even more vulnerable than a human's, and burns from the yellow sun left permanent and ugly scars.

But even the fading pink, cooler light would reveal him for who he was - he would not be able to fly and remain anonymous, and therefore an invisible domesticated, urban vamp'. James liked this life he had made, and was happy that he had made that life with House. And of course he loved House.

Wilson waited as long as he could stand it. "Fuck it!" He threw on his long coat and flung the door open, not bothering to lock it behind him. Keeping as much to the shadows of the buildings as he could, James breathed a sigh of relief as the last curve of the star dipped below the horizon of hills and dirty, smoke-belching buildings of the downtown.

Flying above the roof-tops as quickly and as recklessly as he dared, he made it to Princeton hospital in only minutes.

Taking his entrance by way of House's office balcony, he found the office empty. The team had gone home. So where was House? Wilson could not afford to search the entire hospital. There were far too many people he could run into who not only would recognize him, but would delay his efforts with stale greetings and numbing chatter about their humans lives; which he cared not a dusted vamp' about.

James dialed House's cell phone again and he heard a faint ringing. Following it to its source, it was coming from beneath the desk. James picked it up. House's cell phone, abandoned. House was gone. He could guess where.

Instead of rising to his challenge and coming to America, Yolanda was seeing to it that he would have to come to her.

Wilson dropped the phone and disappeared into the air above Princeton. It would take him several hours of flying, stopping to Feed, then flying again, to reach the self-appointed Queen's hill-top home above the lights and bustle of Copenhagen.

Yolanda had taken his love. If she so much as pulled a single hair from his head...but it was a bold move on her part, as she was not ignorant to his power. James promised himself that taking House was a decision she would not survive to regret. Not even as one of the un-dead.

-

-

"Yolanda!" James shouted as he set down through the open, masonry-framed window of her mansion. It was an abandoned, tumbled down place, built to bear the resemblance to a mansion. There it was failing miserably.

"Where is he?" James wandered the empty halls. He knew House was near-by, he could feel him, he was alive. "Are you going to hide all night?" James shouted at the top of his voice. It echoed over and over and over.

That was probably one of the reasons she annexed the empty mausoleum in the first place. It looked scary and sounded frightening - to a human.

Not to a vampire. To a vampire it was empty stone and pointless noise.

From the shadows Yolanda appeared surrounded by two dozen of her strongest, most debased servants. "How good of you to come, James." She glided across the floor, dressed in her torn flowing chiffon gown, her blonde hair streaked with black and silver.

James was amused. "You look ridiculous." He chuckled. "Have you been watching Munster re-runs again?"

Yolanda smiled. "I confess I do have a weakness for the artifice of our species. Very effective guise for my less credulous human Feeds." She floated to and sat down on an ornate chair that two of her servants pulled up for her from a curtained alcove. The once rich velvet of its cushion was stained and torn with age and ill-use. When the curtain swished back and forth before settling, James made out a collection of broken furniture and thick collections of rolling dust balls. Here, everything was cracked, and old. Used up. Pathetic. Much like Yolanda herself.

Still, she had power and control over dozens, perhaps thousands. And though no one would ever have called her beautiful, she still carried an air of breeding about her.

Most of that, Wilson knew, was the effect of atmosphere. From her scary house on a dark hill, surrounded as she was by filthy, crazed vampires with nothing more imaginative on their minds than Feeding and scraping before her for all eternity, it was a role. Yolanda played the part rather well.

"What do you want?" He asked. He cut to the chase, hoping to sidestep the elaborate mazes of the so-called fun many vampires manufactured in situations like these.

"Why, what you wanted - a challenge, but with an alteration of my own making." She waved a hand and House was brought out, limping. He was sans cane and his head bagged with his own tee-shirt. His naked torso shivered in the cold. "I know you don't want to be leader of the vampires, James, and his will be so much more enjoyable anyway."

House was forced to his knees. Wilson swallowed any fear. That was the worst thing among vampires - show fear and you are as good as disowned. Yolanda would set her slaves upon him and they would greedily snack on vampire blood. And then human. "What alteration?"

"You love him. The rumors have reached everywhere, you know. A vampire who not only lives with his food, but loves it, too. It's barbaric, James. It's perverse. What do you see in this weak creature who is good for nothing but a single meal?"

"More than you could ever see. What is your alteration?"

"So you do love him, yes? We are here to find out if he loves you. Will he be able to tell, blindfolded, which vampire is his love and which vampire is his destroyer?"

James had worried that it might be something like that. Loving a human being was heavily frowned upon. Forbidden, in fact, by most respectable vamp's. "Humans do not have that ability. He could not find me that way, so your alteration is invalid."

"To quote a human poet," Yolanda sneered, "Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other."

"That's talking about feelings in the heart, it has nothing to do wi-"

"-Love is energy of life!" She shouted. "Love prefers twilight to daylight!" She said again at the top of her lungs. "Isn't that right, _human_!?" She reached across the room in an instant of time and slapped House on the side of his head. He fell over but was hauled to his knees again by cold, dead hands.

Yolanda had not moved from her chair. "You love the dark, human? You love the twilight?"

Addressing the whole room again - "Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies." She said, repeating words she could not possibly understand. "Is that correct, _Food_?" She directly spoke to House again but with the contemptible word of his sole substance in her eyes. "Does James love you only for your warm blood and red flushed skin? Such things to us are the bowls of life. They are our lusts and served upon our dinner table.

"He only dreams of your soul, _human_. James dreams of yours because he wants his own back. But he can't have it. Dead things cannot contain life, and vampires can only contain the memories of the blood they have eaten. And so James feeds on the visions your soul secrets away. He is Feeding on your life, _Food_, only he is too weak to drain it properly."

James willed House to remain quiet. To say not a word, not a overly loud breath that she might desire it for the blood in which it lived, and rip his throat out. House remained still. James wondered if he had managed to project his thoughts onto his lover's mind. Perhaps love is energy. Perhaps, in their case, it would respond to the twilight more than to the sun. If so, perhaps his ownership of it was not hopeless after all. Maybe they would live passed this night.

Yolanda had tired of her game, and of the human who had not spoken back. "This vampire does not love you, human." She sighed, wearying of the events. Vampires, their games woven in and out in webs, were eternal creatures and bored very easily. "Twenty-four of my vampires shall stand in a wide circle. You, James, will stand with them. If your human can sense which one of you is the vampire that loves him, and that he loves, you are both free to go. No one will bother you anymore."

James knew better than to believe her. But he could not take on two dozen agents and Yolanda as well. "How do I know you will keep your word?"

"I'm the Queen." As though her nothing words contained everything.

James had no choice but to allow the test. "What happens to House if he fails?"

"Then the choice is yours. Your life or his. If you chose his life, you let him go forever and disappear. You never touch him again. If you choose _your_ life, you must Feed on him, and prove your selfish worth, as all worthy vampires eventually do." Yolanda yawned. "Love is my religion - I could die for it." She smiled widely. "Choose well, James. That life you live wasn't cheap."

James did not like those choices, not that he had any other obvious options. "Then I agree."

The vampires circled House, who was thrust to the center of the ring and pushed to his backside. His arms were wrenched almost from their sockets and tied behind him, the bonds tightened so that he yelped. The vampiress who had made the knots delighted in the pain she had caused. "You smell delicious." She said to him, though loudly enough for the human-loving traitorous vampire to hear.

Such rage it elicited in James._ You'll die second. _He was gnawing to pinch her head off between his fingers. He would do it gradually, reveling in every pop and snap of bone and sinew. Anticipating the colorful flow from what would soon be her real and complete death, it fired the power in him, making him taut in his intent and ready to explode in his planned vengeance.

"Thank you." He said to her, and she stared back in confusion, then covering her discomfort with the baseless giggle of the ignorant.

The vampires fanned out, making the circle larger, spacing themselves, swaying in hungry anticipation; a macabre dance. How they loved their games. Since love or a real feeling could not dwell within the un-dead, amusement fit just as well.

James watched House sit there, turning his blind-folded eyes this way and that. Nothing moved but the lone human and the curtains teased by the open windows. James willed every fibre of his being to send the thought to House's mind. _"I'm here. To your left...to your left! I'm right here. Over here, House. Please...baby, come over here..."_

If he could have felt despair, James would have when House at first turned his head to the right. But then, his head snapped back around.

James was elated. Yes. He's hearing me! He see's my voice and knows to come to me. _This way, sweetness, this way!_

House, wriggled himself to his knees, and managed an awkward stump-walk over to where James stood as silent as still as the others. Even now, House limped on his one bad leg. But that didn't matter - he had chosen _correctly!_

James said to Yolanda, the Queen of the losing side, his tone defiance, his manner triumphant. "He has chosen correctly, Yolanda. According to your word, we are free to go."

Her face twisted in fury and hate. "You'll go no where as long as I'm alive." She waved her ugly arms to her ready horde who had surrounded them both. "KILL THEM!"

James had expected nothing less than betrayal from her. But if they were going to die, she would be the first to taste it. Using all his power and that of Judith and every vampire or human he had ever taken in, James leaped across the room and took Yolanda down with a single swipe of his hand. His nails raked across her skin, leaving tracks that faded as soon as they had marked.

But he was not finished. Yolanda, if not killed in the next instant, would quickly overpower him. James ripped opened her throat, tearing her jugular, then tossed her bleeding-out form to the minions who had been steadily crowding in on House. Still tied up and helpless, there was no where for him to run, if he could even have done so blindfolded and crippled.

None of them had even seen the traitor vampire move until it was all over and their leader was a corpse for the second time. "Here!" James shouted to them, they turning to his voice. "Don't you want the power of your queen!?"

Her fickle, greedy followers immediately set upon her, ripping her limb from limb, sucking up whatever each of them could swallow from her ancient and legendary powers, leaving only two night-crawlers who remained still focused on a human Feed. One of them was the female vamp' who had mocked House's pain - and so his own as well.

James killed them both with a snap of his wrists, their heads, hers then his, falling away and their bodies disintegrating in a gray puff of formless powder. Grit for the scratched marble floor. Sightless feet would walk on them, unaware, uncaring.

Without a second look at the Feed frenzy, James scooped House up over his shoulder and disappeared through the window, calling out for them to hear - "LOVE SEEKETH NOT ITSELF TO PLEASE, NOR FOR ITSELF HATH ANY CARE, BUT FOR ANOTHER GIVES ITS EASE, AND BUILDS A HEAVEN IN HELL'S DESPAIR!!"*

A battle cry. The winning trumpets. The beating drum. The cheer of victory. The sacredness of life preserved so it could be cherished one more day. James mused as he flew through the fine night air that he was glad Wilson was such a sap when it came to poetry. That one had suited rather well, he thought. House was warm over his shoulder. Forever he, James, would also be warm, as long as he could feel the skin of this man cradling his own. Each had risked their life for the other. If that wasn't love...

Suddenly James didn't feel so un-dead after all. Perhaps there were no un-dead - not really. Perhaps there were only the un-loving.

Once back home, Wilson put an unconscious House to bed, and then ensured all windows and doors were securely locked. Probably there was no need anymore. Now that he had slaughtered Yolanda, his reputation was solidified. He was more powerful than even their reputed queen had been. Wilson knew it wasn't true, of course. James hadn't been stronger, just smarter. But in any world, power was more politics than battles fought. And because power was also an illusion, the other vampires would leave them alone now.

House stirred and entered the living room. Wilson made sure he had coffee ready - the disgustingly bitter stuff - and after adding cream and sugar, House drank it gratefully.

James was proud of his tough, fragile, marvelous human. Wilson was proud, too, and asked him - "How did you know where to turn? I was sending you my thoughts, hoping...did you really hear me, I mean the _James_ me, in your mind?"

House turned his head to look at his friend. Yes, he did love this _man-like _thing. More _man_ that _like_; enough that it didn't make any difference anymore. And the other, the vampire one - James, a frightening creature, but still a creature. Not a demon, not a god from hell. House was still undecided which one was more exciting. But he now knew he wanted both. Whether that was love by proximity, drug or blood, he didn't care. He loved Wilson. He loved James.

How lucky can one human get? "I didn't."

Wilson frowned. "Then how...?" It would have been impossible.

"None of the other vampires were wearing Gucci aftershave."

Wilson stared in shock. Simple deduction by a brilliant human diagnostician. Only humans would have noticed such an odor. No vampire sought to distinguish one smell from another save for the blood of their meals. Wilson dared to thank god he had been wearing it. In fact, ever since becoming a vampire and having to cope with the musty smell of his own deadness, he had been using double the morning splash.

Wilson laughed uproariously at House's simple solution, throwing back his head then, when he had recovered himself, leaned in and kissed House on the lips, House allowing it. In fact, to Wilson's shock and delight, he kissed back.

Wilson let go of the lips he had been dreaming about for years and backed off to see his love's - his _lover's_ - face. "Is this all right?"

House shrugged. "Well, it'd be more comfortable in the bedroom, but if you want to stay here on the nice, hard couch, I'm okay with tha-"

Wilson snatched him up and they were lying on the bedroom mattress in seconds flat. House didn't know he had even been moved until he felt the springy thing beneath him and Wilson's cool body draped over him from head to toe.

"Neat trick." House said. "Don't do it again, though, or your cut off."

Wilson grinned like a fool. "Deal." Then resumed his exploration of House's lips and mouth. Removing their clothes at a more controlled pace, he plunged House's willing body with his own, and it occurred to him that rarely, but wonderfully, vampire dreams came true. Maybe it was because he had clung to the remnants of life through his unfathomable love for this human. Maybe because this human had clung to him.

Perhaps that had confused the gods enough to leave them be.

Whatever. Wilson raked his body up against House's, both their cocks hard and taking of the friction of each other, building toward something neither of them had ever before known in the other. House warmed him, and he cooled House. Life or death, hot or cold, together a balm for the soul and the absent-of-soul. Wilson reasoned; not life but what life was made of. This was new. Something here was being born.

James fucked, kissed and licked his lover in the darkness. He agreed.

For either soul, the dark wasn't so bad after all.

**END**

We are such stuff  
As dreams are made on; and our little life  
Is rounded with a sleep.

_W. Shakespeare._

The poets Yolanda quotes are, in order:

_Rainer Maria Rilke_

_Robert Browning_

_Oliver Wendell Holmes_

_John Donne_

_John Keats_

James quotes _William Blake._

and

The final poem snippet is from _W. Shakespeare's The Tempest (Prospero)_


End file.
